


Conquests of an Accidental Stud-Monkey

by Darkenning, OverMaster



Category: Mahou Sensei Negima!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Group Sex, Harem, Parent/Child Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 15:13:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 18
Words: 192,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19008373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkenning/pseuds/Darkenning, https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverMaster/pseuds/OverMaster
Summary: "How are you doing that, Negi-kun?" "Doing what? ... oh." How will Negi's new circumstances change his fate? Diverges from canon immediately post magical world arc.





	1. Asuna, Setsuna, Konoka

**Author's Note:**

> Mahou Sensei Negima was created by Akamatsu Ken. This is parody, protected speech.

Later - much later, when she had a far clearer picture of what had actually happened than anyone could possibly have when they were going through the situation - Natsumi came to the simple conclusion that the whole thing was Makie's fault. She never shared this opinion with anyone, least of all Yue, who had similarly worked things out but come to a completely different conclusion - specifically, that it was all Iinchou's fault. (It was probably for the best that she never shared that notion with Natsumi, either; for various reasons, Natsumi was much more inclined towards sympathy for Ayaka than Yue would ever be.)

Had anyone thought to ask Makie whom she was inclined to blame, she'd have just blinked in abject and ridiculously cute confusion. The notion of blame implied anger, and she had no reason to be angry at anyone. What had happened was a good thing all around. If she'd been asked, then, whom she was inclined to praise for what had happened, she would cheerfully assigned all responsibility to Negi himself.

He would have been embarassed by that. It's probably best that nobody ever asked.

Be that as it may, Natsumi would also develop an opinion on just when it had begun, and here she was more or less in tune with Yue. (Not so much Makie, who took the position that things had started much later.) In their view, the whole thing had begun when the three of them were seated on the hillside along with a stack of books that was not  _quite_  as tall as Yue, pleasantly jawing about how nice it was to be back in Japan and on Earth, but how things weren't quite as happy as they might have been otherwise.

It was very soothing, for all the strangeness. Natsumi had never really spent a lot of time with either of these girls, and apparently they'd never spent a lot of time with each other. That had really surprised her when she'd learned about it; she'd had the impression that the various members of the Baka Rangers were all really close friends, but apparently that was not the case. Nonetheless, what they'd been through had all bonded them. Which was nice.

And then Makie, somewhat out of nowhere, had declared, "The next time we see Negi-kun, we'll have Yue-chan confess her love to him!"

Yue's immediate reaction to this declaration had been to nearly cough herself to death as the frankly unspeakable beverage she was drinking went down the wrong tube. Natsumi had just flushed brightly.

"What, what, what - no, what?" Yue said after a moment. "Where did this come from?"

"I did it!" Makie proclaimed.

"How does that  _even remotely_  follow from what I asked?"

"When?" Natsumi asked, for this seemed to her mind the far more important question.

"Why are you encouraging her?" Yue gasped.

"Eh?" Makie said, giggling coquettishly. "You wanna know? Really? Welll ... you see, there was this one time, when Negi-kun told me I was amazing, you see, and -"

"Yeah, I'm sorry, Yue-chan, it was wrong of me," Natsumi apologized, looking away.

"So now it's your turn, Yue-chan!" Makie assured her, making Natsumi wonder why her neck didn't break doing that mood shift.

"Why is it my turn?" Yue asked. "There are numerous girls who could confess their loves first!"

At that moment, Natsumi noticed two things. First, there was a rustling noise coming from the bushes not far from where they were sitting. Secondly, there were bushes not far from where they were sitting.  _Wait,_  she thought,  _wasn't this a grassy slope when we sat down a few minutes ago?_

Before she could vocalize that thought, holding a pair of branches in either hand, Nodoka burst up from her camouflage and proclaimed, "I agree with Maki-chan!"

"Gyaaaah!" went all three of the girls she'd just startled with her uncharacteristically aggressive entrance.

"Pst!" Nodoka said to Natsumi and Makie, gesturing for them to get closer and then speaking  _sotto voce_. "Yue was so worried about everybody else, you see, that she never wanted to tell Negi-sensei how she feels ... but I think if she does that, she'll get all her memories back, and then not do anything crazy like running off to Ariadne after graduation!"

"Nodoka, what are you telling these two?" Yue, who could hear what was being said quite clearly, asked in an increasingly panic-stricken tone.

"We'll help you, Yue-chan!" Makie assured her. "Do it! Confess your love!"

"This is the most illogical thing I've ever heard!"

"I quite agree," said a cool, quiet voice from just behind them, which sent chills running up all four of their spines. "And I hope that realization of its illogic will help convince you to refrain from suh actions."

They whirled. Standing there, not ten feet away from them, was the terrifying figure of their substitute teacher and former nemesis - well, perhaps not so former, at that - Fate Averruncus, regarding them with the same grim and unsmiling expression he nearly always had. Instantly, Makie, Nodoka and Yue went into defensive postures. Natsumi would have done so too, if she hadn't been terrified beyond rational thought.

After a moment to let his first words sink in, though, Fate simply continued speaking. "Negi-kun is currently hard at work on his plan to save the world. He does not have time for simple things like eating and sleeping, let alone your silly girlish games. He bears the weight of the world on his shoulders, and no one who cannot share that burden should have anything to do with him." A brief pause. "In other words, girls, he's mine, all mine, and you should give up on him."

Sheerest shock at the blunt statement was the only expression to be seen on any of the girls' faces. (As it happened, there was a certain measured amount of relief that Haruna wasn't here to hear that statement in Nodoka and Yue's minds, but it was drowned out by shock.)

"I will permit you to go on living your silly little lives," Fate said, looking up in the sky. "But stay the heck out of his way ... oh, look, speak of the devil."

And then, like an angel descending from the sky, Negi rode his wand down to where they were standing, looking genuinely happy to see everyone present. "Girls!" he said. "What a pleasant surprise. I managed to get done with the other job early today. Still, I'm sorry that I haven't been able to see any of you at school recently. To make up for it, would you like to join me for some tea?"

"Uh," they chorused, glancing from him to Fate and back again.

Coughing slightly for no apparent reason, Fate interposed. "Just a moment, Negi-kun?"

"Hm? Something wrong?"

"As it happens, yes. The process of acquiring the materials for the elevator have been dogged by difficulties, and -"

"That's terrible! What's the problem now?"

"Well, you see ..." Fate continued to explain as he gently led Negi away from the girls.

"... that guy is going down," Makie proclaimed quietly, yet firmly.

* * *

A little ways away, Negi finally frowned. "Fate," he said. "I'm pretty sure that we resolved these problems earlier this week."

"Would you believe that they've recurred?"

"why are you expressing it as a question?"

"Would you believe -"

"Fate," Negi groaned, annoyed. "Did you really just invent a problem just to drag me away from the girls in my class?"

"My class," Fate said smoothly.

"Our class," Negi offered as a compromise.

Fate looked annoyed at the compromise, but nodded acceptance, both of the statement and its implications.

"Why did you do that?"

"I have no hobbies, and very few interests. Messing with those entitled young women is one of them. Would you deny me that tiny bit of fun?"

All that Negi could do was shake his head and resolve not to be so readily swayed by Fate's schemes in the future. That resolution was what Makie would have stated was the true turning point. Which was absurd, of course, and no one would ever have believed that.

Certainly not Negi. After all, if his resolution was so important, how then to explain the way that, just a few days later, he was where he was, in an age-shifted disguise, accompanying Kotaro and Fate (both similarly age-shifted, with the latter pretending to be someone named  _Fidius_  Averruncus) on an expedition to a karaoke box with the cheerleader trio? He'd gotten pulled into yet another scheme, almost immediately, and all that he could do was hope that he'd be able to interfere with it when it reached fruition.

Well, that and discover that he had absolutely no talent for karaoke. Not that he cared about his score, after all. Still, it all made him sigh a litte.

"Is something the matter, Nagi-san?" asked Misa, as she bent over to hand him a drink and - posssibly accidentally, but mmmmmaybe not - give him a good look at her cleavage.

"Um, no, no, it's just ... um, thank you, this will definitely, um, yes," Nagi stammered as he felt his skin turn bright red while accepting the drink.

It was one thing to accept, as he'd basically had no choice  _but_  to accept, that several of the girls in his class viewed him not as a teacher and friend, but as a prospective romantic partner. (He thought of the way Akira-san had patiently broken the news to him, and almost sighed again.) It was quite another to have someone clearly trying to attract his interest, particularly now, when he was in a state where he was much more conscious of that interest than he might have been. It was a little disturbing, particularly since he had no idea whether this was a serious attempt on Misa's part or not. He really wasn't sure what she was thinking.

Misa was thinking, more or less,  _He's so pure for such a hottie! It's adorable! I don't know whether I want to protect him, or whether I want to throw him to the ground and perform incredibly lewd acts on his person! It's just like with Negi-kun, if he were bigger! I wonder if he's bigger everywhere?_

Abruptly, an unaccustomed sense of shame filled the soul of Kakizaki Misa.  _Wait, no. This is wrong! He was dating Ako, wasn't he? I was rooting for them! I couldn't just, after they've broken up ... but they have broken up, right, so there isn't really any problem ... but no, no, I should talk to Ako first, find out if she's okay with it -_

"Nagi" let out a small chuckle. "Well, I think I've had the wrong idea about you, Kakizaki-san. I was a little uncomfortable before, but watching you go through all those facial expressions has been very endearing. You're actually a lot of fun to be with!"

After a brief, timeless interval of purest void in her thoughts, Misa's consciousness returned with a simple decision.  _Screw you Ako, I'm going for it!_  "Nagi-san, this might sound a little abrupt, but -

On the other side of the room, Sakurako had been cheerfully airing her many, many grievances with Fate to his 'older brother, Fidius', while he listened with a patient, gentle smile. "Well, I'll be sure and give him some feedback on the subject," he assured her.

"You're so cool!" Sakurako squeed. "Um, Fidius-san -"

At that moment, the door to the booth was flung open, and Madoka, who'd gone to the rest room a few moments ago, entered almost at a run, saying, "Oy, Kojirou-kun -"

"- would you go out with me?" the three cheerleaders chorused.

"Eh?" said 'Nagi'.

"Ehhh?" said 'Kojirou'.

"Timed this rather well, I think," said 'Fidius', checking his watch.

The room was filled with a cloud of smoke and a strange popping noise. When the smoke cleared, a number of the people inside it now looked rather different from the way they had a moment earlier.

"Ahem," said Fate, now wearing a suit far too large for his petite frame. "Your commentary on my teaching style is not appreciated, Shiina-san. Furthermore, it is strictly forbidden for students in my class to enter recreational facilities after six o'clock in the evening. The three of you will be attending remedial lessons, starting tomorrow, unless your regular teacher should -" Saying so, he turned to look at Negi, and broke off.

After a moment, he resumed speaking. "Negi-kun, how are you doing that?"

"Doing what?" 'Nagi' asked, then looked down at his still adult form, and murmured a confused, "Oh."

His murmur was somewhat drowned out by the notes of protest and dissatisfaction with which two of the three cheerleaders greeted these developments.

"Wah!" declared Sakurako, tears streaming from her eyes. "Fate-kun is so mean!"

"You can't do that Fate-kun!" Misa added, genuine outrage in her voice.

"Yes, I am, and yes, I can," Fate alternatively agreed and contradicted, smiling faintly, before turning his attention back to Negi. "Do you mean to tell me that you didn't do this deliberately?"

"I don't think so," Negi said, still studying his hands with a confused expression. "I don't even know ... I don't know  _how_  I'd do this, I've never studied the age changing pills and how they work in any detail, so ..." He trailed off, beginning to look just a bit concerned.

"A-age-changing pills?" Madoka stammered out from where she was still standing in the doorway. "Then - then, what, Fidius-san is Fate-kun, and, and Nagi-san is ... Negi-kun?" she asked, head moving from the boy to the "man".

"Yes, that's what I was trying to tell you, about why I got dumped," said a quiet voice from behind her, and Negi was momentarily distracted from his contemplation of his circumstances, looking up to see that Ako was poking her head in the room.

"Oh," he said, flushing with deep embarassment. "H-hello, Ako-san."  _And after I promised not to become Nagi around her again, too! It seems I can't do_  anything  _right this evening._

"Hello, Negi-kun," the petite, blue-haired student said, trying to avoid giving the impression that she was reluctant to look at him while at the same time trying to avoid the impulse to stare at those oh-so-handsome features. "Um ... shouldn't you be turning back into a kid, like the others have?"

"Yes," said Fate, getting up and moving, with surprising grace considering the baggy suit which was encumbering him, over to where Negi was still seated. "Yes, he should be."

Ignoring this byplay, Madoka continued with the thought she'd been having earlier. "And, then, that means that ... that ... K-Kojiro-kun is ... is ..."

"I haven't moved from where I was sitting," Kotaro said, glancing at her momentarily. "It shouldn't be that hard to figure it out."

"- that little jerk who hangs around with Natsumi-san?" she asked, sounding horrified.

KOtaro slumped. "Badass martial artist, gainfully employed, supernatural powers, but what do they remember?" he asked no one in particular.

Ignoring this, and the way that Madoka had collapsed, quietly screaming to herself as she held her head, Misa pressed on. "No, seriously, nobody told us about this so-called rule of yours before we came in here, so -"

"Kakizaki-san," Fate said, turning to look at her. "You will find, as you grow up -  _if_  that happens - that ignorance of the law is not generally held to be an excuse for violating it. Now if you'll excuse me, I have other, much more important matters to deal with. Negi-kun, we should get you to a doctor."

Negi looked up, startled. "It's not that serious, is it?" he asked. "Surely, surely we can go forward with tonight's meeting with -" He broke off, deciding that going into those details in the presence of those uninvolved with the plan was perhaps not the smartest thing that he could do.

"The meeting can be postponed or delayed, but, as I believe that I told you already, if something happens to cause the project's failure - and you developing serious health issues could conceivably cause that - you know what I'll do."

Negi flinched. "All right, all right ..."

"What will he do?" Sakurako quietly asked Kotaro.

"Restart Cosmo Entelechia, and absorb the souls of pretty much everyone in the Magical World into a never-ending dream," he answered her quietly.

"... I don't know what that means, but it sounds really bad," Sakurako said. "I really really hate that guy."

"Join the club."

"... there's a club?"

* * *

"Get used to it," Yukihiro Ayaka advised her disconcerted dinner companion, as she finished stirring the cream into her tea. "This is what your life is going to be like from this point onward. And anyway, I was under the impression that you wore far more elaborate dresses over there."

"Over there was over there, this is ... not," Asuna replied, shifting uncomfortably in her seat across the table from the class representative. "This ... thing you've got me wearing is embarassing. I know that it's a typical party dress but -"

"It's very becoming, your highness," Ayaka said. She probably didn't intend for the compliment to sound quite as flirtatious as it did.

Asuna flushed. "I told you to cut that out!" The thrill of being referred to as a princess and treated with veneration that bordered on - and sometimes crossed into - outright worship had faded quickly.

"It is simply an expression of amazement that someone so unrefined is actually royalty," Ayaka said, lifting her tea up to sip it with a faint smile.

On the other hand, it was better than some other ways that she got treated. "You are seriously starting to -"

Before she could continue in that line, however, she felt the signal inside her head that foreboded a telepathic contact from her partner. Early on, she'd been unable to recognize the signal, and the first that she knew of a call coming in would be 'hearing' Negi's 'voice' in her head. She'd developed since then, and now, with a practiced gesture, she fished her card out of its hiding place and held it to her head a moment before the 'voice' 'sounded'.

_Asuna-san?_

_Right here, Negi. With Iinchou, waiting for you and the boys to show up. What's the holdup?_

_Ah, well ... you see ... um ... I want to stress that I'm not in any trouble -_

Asuna rolled her eyes.  _What did you do?_

Negi's mental voice was almost a whine.  _Why do you automatically assume that it was me?_

_... I'm not going to dignify that with a response. What happened?_

_Um ... I appear to be stuck in an aged-up form, for some reason. It's probably nothing serious, but Fate insists on getting me to a magical doctor for an examination. I'm going to be contacting Iinchou-san right after this to tell her -_

And then, not  _exactly_  for the first time, Asuna 'heard' Ayaka's 'voice' in her head as well.  _I'll contact the Prime Minister's office and reschedule the meeting for later, Negi-sensei._

Asuna's eyes, slightly closed to help her focus on the telepathy, snapped open to the sight of Ayaka holding a card of her own to her forehead. Heedless of Asuna's surprise, the class representative continued to send.  _You just take care of your health, it is your most precious asset, and Fate-san is perfectly right to insist on having you see a doctor._

_Thank you for being so understanding, Iinchou-san,_  Negi's 'voice' betrayed no surprise at Ayaka's presence in the conversation.  _I'm so sorry about all of this. I'm sure that I'll see you both soon._  With that, the telepathic link ceased.

"... since when can you do that?" Asuna asked, lowering her card a bit.

"What, involving myself in a telepathic conversation with our mutual Magister?" Ayaka asked, lowering her own. "It's a simple enough use of the system."

Asuna wasn't sure she liked the notion that it was simple for someone else using the pactio's telepathy to eavesdrop on someone else's private conversation, but that wasn't exactly what she'd meant. "No, I mean ... when did you, uh, make a pactio with Negi, anyway?"

Now Ayaka brought the card to her lips, smiling in a rather sinister way. "Oh? Would you like to hear it, Asuna-san? The tale of the miraculous love between Negi-sensei and myself? I must say, I don't think you should be prying into other people's private lives, but -"

"Uh, well, in that case -"

"- if you insist, then I suppose I must!" Ayaka continued, very quickly. "Yes, I shall tell you of the memorial of the forbidden love of Yukihiro Ayaka and Negi-sensei!"

"No, that's okay," Ayaka said dully.

"Let it begin!"

"No, really, I don't -"

* * *

"Are you uncomfortable, Negi-kun?" the doctor asked.

Since this seemed to be a deceptively important question, Negi gave it the careful consideration such an inquiry deserved. "No, not really," he answered. "I don't feel particularly cold, even with my shirt off like this." He looked down at the examination table where he was sitting, and added, "And the table isn't too hard, either."

"That's not really what I meant," she said, then, with a shake of her head, laughed a little. "But I suppose I should have expected an answer like that. You're very like your father, even if I got a factually correct answer rather than a snarky one, this time."

"Eh?" he said, now alert and interested. "You knew - oh. I'm sorry. That was a silly question, wasn't it? Of course you knew him."

"Not as well as my husband," said Konoe Kouko, agreeably. "But, yes, I knew him a long, long time ago. I'll tell you about that some other time. Now, before I tell you what I've been able to figure out about your situation, I have another question to ask you, not as a doctor, but as the mother of one of your students, partners, and roommates. I refer of course to Konoka, in case you weren't certain."

Negi, a polite boy - young man, presently - resisted the impulse to flinch.

"These age-shifting pills that you used," she said, her pleasant, cheerful smile not altering one bit as she spoke, yet somehow conveying menace with it that would have been the envy of certain students. "Has Konoka been using them?"

"Um ... only once, as far as I know ... well, technically, it was more than once, but ... only one specific time, even if she used them a couple of different ways, that one time, and ... uh, well, what I mean is, I think what I mean is, she only used them to find out what they did, not to, er, do anything bad. I think."

She waited to see if his statement was truly over, before nodding. "I see," she said. "Youthful experimentation. Nothing to worry about, really. I did far stranger things at that age."

"Really?"

"Some other time," she repeated. "Well, now that that's settled, I have good news for you and bad news for you. Which do you want first?"

"The bad news, please," Negi said, bracing himself.

"Good news it is," Kouko said pleasantly, making him sway back a bit. "The good news is, you're a perfectly normal, healthy fifteen year old boy."

"Ahem," said Negi, starting to feel just a bit impatient. "Yes, that would be good news, if I weren't actually not quite eleven."

"I was getting to that," the doctor said mildly. "The bad news is that what's happened to you can only be described in theoretical terms, since, as far as I know, you're the only person who has ever suffered from this combination of conditions. Let me ask you something - how exactly do you normally use Magia Erebea? In a fight, I mean, in case you weren't certain."

"Well, I -" And then he broke off as he started to guess where she was going with all this. "Oh, no," he groaned.

"Let me summarize, then. You cast a spell, then absorb it into your body, extending its duration from a second or so to several minutes, incorporating its effects into your person so that you can use them for other purposes," Kouko narrated. "And this is just what has happened, now, as well. Only instead of the spell you cast normally lasting for a few seconds, like most battle magics, the effect was supposed to last for a couple of hours. So instead of lasting for a few minutes, the effects you've absorbed into yourself will probably last for ... months."

"Months?" Negi repeated incredulously.

"At a minimum. In case you weren't certain."

"But, but - wait, I have to deliberately absorb a spell in order to use it as a Pro Armatione," Negi protested, flailing about for some way that this could be a mistake. "How can it -"

"Mm-hm, and you normally have to incant it. You didn't have to incant anything to use the pill, did you?" Kouko asked, as Negi slapped his own forehead. "There probably was a moment where you chose this, but it might have been something almost unconscious. Some moment where you wished things were different than they were."

"Nyergh," Negi said cleverly as he remembered thinking just that while watching Fate toying with the cheerleaders.

"Well, it's not so bad. But before you get any clever ideas about taking another one and trying to get yourself back to normal  _that_  way, let me state clearly - that would be a bad idea. We don't know what might happen, and there's a real danger that you might suffer a more serious problem."

"... okay," Negi said, weary, defeated. "I guess ... well, could you let my friends in so that I can tell them?"

"Of course," Kouko, heading over to the door to the small examination room. She opened it and let Kotaro enter quickly, followed more patiently by Fate. She regarded the white-haired boy with no small amount of suspicion, but allowed him entry nonetheless.

"Well, the good news is that I'm perfectly fine," Negi said. "The bad news is, I'm stuck this way and we don't know how long."

"That is good news," Fate said. "There should be no problems completing the tasks for the project in this form. Actually, for those which would require you to appear as a more mature person, it's more convenient, since you won't run the chance of shifting back in the middle."

"It's also really bad news," Kotaro said, glaring at Fate. "Where the heck are you gonna stay here on campus?"

Negi blinked. "Oh, feathers!" he cursed.

"... that's a curse?" Kotaro asked.

"I never even considered that!" Negi said, hopping off the table. "I can't stay in the girls dorm room like this, the Headmaster -"

"What about me, Negi-kun?" said a cheerful voice from the doorway.

As Konoemon walked slowly into the room, Negi swallowed. "Um, I was just saying that the Headmaster would never permit me to stay in the girls dormitory now that I've become like this. I assure you that I'll quickly find a new place to live and -"

"Oh, no, Negi-kun, we can't have that. House-hunting is a very involved process, after all, especially in today's terrible housing market. It could take weeks for you to find somewhere to live, and that's without taking into consideration the change of address paperwork you'd have to fill out!" Konoemon shook his head soberly, and yet Negi had the strangest feeling that, beneath his beard and heavy moustache, the old man was smiling broadly. "It's really a full-time job in itself, and you already have too many of those."

"Yes, you do," said Fate.

"But, then -" Negi started to say.

"Under those circumstances, it simply can't be helped - you'll have to keep on living where you've been living. I have complete confidence that nothing untoward will happen. I'm sure that you'll take complete responsibility for your actions." He nodded forcefully.

Negi had grown up quite a bit in the last little while. (Even without considering his current, artificial physical maturity.) So he was not completely oblivious to the fact that the last two statements, while they sounded very similar, did not exactly mean the same thing. Under the circumstances, though, all that he could do in response was say, "Um, well ..."

"I am totally secure in the notion of having my granddaughter in your care, Negi-kun," the headmaster assured him. "And so is her mother! Aren't you, my dear?"

Kouko was staring at the headmaster with an expression that could perhaps most charitably be described as skeptical. When addressed by him, she let out a sigh, rolled her eyes, and nodded shortly. All without saying a word.

"Then we're agreed," Konoemon said cheerfully.

"Well, I suppose ... but, still -" Negi said, still quite uncomfortable with this situation.

"'Scuse me a second," interjected Kotaro, smiling politely. "Would it be possible for this humble person to have a word or two in private with  _Negi-kun_?"

"Certainly, certainly," Konoemon said. "Let's step outside, dear," he added to Kouko.

Kouko gave him another rather skeptical look, but stepped out into the hallway and closed the door.

"I don't think I've ever heard you using keigo before," Negi said wonderingly.

"Stick it," suggested Kotaro. "Dude, what is your problem?"

"It's just not right," he replied. "Boys and girls shouldn't live together after a certain -"

"That's what I thought it was," Kotaro interrupted again. "Okay. Reality check - you're not living with girls, you're living with Asuna and Konoka-san. And Asuna will punch you through a wall if you try anything! And as for Konoka-san ..." He trailed off, shaking his head.

"... I don't think she could do that," Negi said.

"She wouldn't have to! Setsuna-san would cut you right open!" Kotaro ran his hands through his hair. "And all that stuff the old man said about finding a new place to live was completely on the level, and you know it! You don't have time for that! If you spend too much time on it, the project will be set back, and Fate's going to start Cosmo Entelechia up again!"

"Yes I will," Fate confirmed absently as he examined the medical supplies with detached yet fascinated interest. Having never been sick, he'd never been inside a doctor's office, and the novelty of this experience was somewhat intriguing to him.

"So just cope with the humiliation for a while, all right?" Kotaro concluded.

"... I guess it really can't be helped," Negi agreed after a moment.

"What exactly do they use these for?" Fate asked, holding up a tongue depresser.

"Making ice-cream," Negi said, who'd always wondered why doctors had those.

"... well, now you're just being silly."

* * *

"Tadaima," Asuna announced as she walked in the door of her room, after Ayaka had finally agreed that they should both go back to the dorm if Negi and the boys weren't going to show up. Of course, that had been after she'd gone into detail about how she'd made her pactio, including an attempt at expressing her feelings about it through interpretative dance. It had been horrifying. Asuna was truly glad to be back.

Not nearly as glad, though, as Konoka seemed to be that she was just back, judging by the way that she squealed and threw herself at Asuna in a tackle hug that almost pushed the other girl off her feet. "Welcome back, Asuna!" Konoka crowed as she clenched their bodies close together.

"Ah!" Asuna exclaimed. "Konoka, come on, what's up with this!"

"Well, you hardly ever come home anymore, so it's an occasion for celebration when you do!" Konoka said, as piously as one can say anything while grinning widely and hugging someone.

Asuna shook her head in only partially mock dismay. "Geez," she said. She turned to look at Setsuna, hoping to get a less crazy response to her return.

Setsuna was genuflecting towards her. "Welcome home, your royal highness, Asuna-himesama!"

_So much for that,_  Asuna thought dazedly. "Setsuna-san, what  _are_  you doing?"

"An exalted individual, such as yourself, destined to inherit a kingdom that traces its lineage to the time of the gods themselves, should not condescend to waste your breath speaking to such as this unworthy person!" Setsuna replied. Well, she engaged in non sequitur, which counts for some people as a reply.

"Wha -" Asuna tried to say.

"This one earnestly and humbly begs your forgiveness for any and all past rudeness! Ignorance of your exalted nature is no excuse for them!"

"What rudenesses, I mean, rudeness?" Asuna finally managed to ask. "... okay, there  _were_  those times when you suggested I might be in love with Negi, but -"

"- and yet you have still, with godlike mercy, permitted me to be your friend!" Setsuna interjected, still without even slightly looking up from the floor. "Therefore, this Sakurazaki Setsuna shall spare no effort to ensure that not a trace of shame ever comes to your exalted person!"

"... Konoka, what the ever-loving heck?" Asuna asked after a moment.

"I have no idea what's going on," replied Konoka, who'd been watching all this with wide eyes. "I mean, she seemed a little upset all the time she didn't see you, but ... I've never seen her acting like this." She glanced from the still-genuflecting form on the floor to Asuna and then back again. "I'm kind of starting to feel a little jealous, actually."

Before Asuna could respond to that, the door to their dorm room opened and Negi - in aged-up form - entered. "Well," he said, without preamble, "I have some good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"

"Good news," Asuna and Konoka chorused. Setsuna continued to genuflect.

* * *

"So that's the situation," Negi concluded sometime later. "I'm stuck like this for the next few months, but the Headmaster has generously agreed to let me continue living here in your dorm room."

"'Generously'," Konoka said, a rather skeptical look on her face.

Negi glanced at her with obvious amazement. "You really looked like your mother just now."

Now she adopted a rather cross expression as she looked at him. "Gee, thanks, Negi-kun. Every teenaged girl on Earth dreams of the day that they're told they look like their mother!"

"They - oh. Sarcasm." He nodded his head while rubbing the back of it with one hand. "I apologize."

"Well, it's probably not a problem," Asuna said. If nothing else, listening to the explanation had gotten Setsuna out of her posture of genuflection and seated comfortably with the other two girls. "I mean, despite everything, you're still a kid where it counts, right?"

"... I'm not honestly sure what you mean by that," Negi replied.

"Which kinda proves my point," Asuna replied, rolling her eyes.

"Well, as long as he doesn't crawl into bed with Asuna -" Konoka started to say.

"I haven't done that in months!" Negi protested. "And not just because we were separated for most of that time!"

Again with the skeptical expression from Konoka.

"Okay, there was that  _one time_  where I crawled into Chisame-san's futon by mistake, but that was because we were at an inn and I was confused about my whereabouts -" Negi started to explain.

Setsuna coughed politely, her hand over her mouth. "There will be no problems," she said, with calm certainty. "I will stand guard over both Ojousama and Asuna-himesama, to prevent Negi-sensei from disgracing either of them or himself."

The statement hung in the air for a few moments, before Konoka found it in her to, quetly, gently, and giving no impression that images of a disemboweled, decapitated or otherwise horribly maimed Negi were floating in her mind's eye, ask the question, "Um ... Setchan. What exactly do you mean by that?"

Setsuna blinked in bewilderment. "Obviously, I mean that if Negi-sensei should, in a daze, happen to try to climb into either your bed, or into Asuna-himsesama's bed, I will alert him to what he is doing so that he won't do so, being the polite and respectful person that I know him to be."

Konoka started let out a quiet sigh of relief.

"And if that doesn't work, I'll kill him."

The sigh of relief died a death of strangled coughing.

"That was a joke, of course," Setsuna announced a moment later. "I'm trying some techniques that Mana recommended for lightening the mood."

Asuna and Negi watched this byplay with mixed feelings, since they were uncomfortably well aware that neither of their friends had yet to learn the full truth about Negi's condition, and they weren't exactly happy to be deceiving either of them about it. On the other hand ... it was sort of refreshing to see Konoka on the receiving end of some trolling for once.

"Well," Asuna said. "Anyway, I think it's probably time for us to go have a bath -"

"Oh, no," said Negi, abruptly sounding very sure of himself as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. "I had a bath this morning at the hotel, and another one right before I got all dressed up to go meet up with Fate. I am  _not_  having another one, even if I wasn't like this.  _Not!_ "

"Um - I was really just talking about the three of us, Negi," Asuna said after a moment, gesturing towards herself, Konoka and Setsuna.

"Oh."

* * *

"He actually is a little more aggressive when he's like that, isn't he?" Asuna mused to Konoka as they walked out of the room, distracted enough that she didn't notice Setsuna bending down to set a pair of shoes down in front of her that the bodyguard had swept out from ... somewhere concealed on her person.

"Little bit," Konoka said, who did notice.

"Well, I guess that's how boys are," Asuna said with a shrug, distracted enough not to notice the way that Setsuna moved to put a handkerchief down to cover a speck of dirt on the floor in front of them. "But it's going to be an awfully long few months if he's like that all the time."

"Tell me about it," Konoka agreed ... feeling a headache coming on as she did.

* * *

Meanwhile, after doing some paperwork that he'd brought home with him, Negi decided that he should probably take advantage of the opportunity to get an early night's sleep, and headed for the drawer where he kept his pyjamas.

Then stopped half-way there.

"Oh, fudge," he muttered.

* * *

A relatively short interval later, Asuna, Setsuna and Konoka were walking down the hallway back to the dorm room in their pyjamas, the foremost of them patiently lecturing Setsuna as they went. "Okay, I'm going to let the genuflecting and the scraping go this time," Asuna was saying rather sternly. "Because I paid you back by messing with you, and that was actually a surprisingly fun thing to do."

"Wasn't it though," said Konoka rather dryly, who for some reason hadn't been able to find nearly as much fun in it as Asuna had.

Asuna proved oblivious to that statement and its tone as she warmed to her theme. "But some of the tears that I was shedding back there were real ones, and so you have got to start treating me like a regular person, got it?"

"Yes, yes, I apologize," Setsuna agreed, nodding rapidly. "I am clearly a failure as a friend."

Asuna stopped and whirled around to face Setsuna directly, slamming her hands down on the other girl's shoulders. "That is exactly what I don't mean!" she snapped. "We are friends for life, okay?  _Okay?_  You would have an easier time getting Chachamaru away from Eva-chan than you will getting yourself away from me!"

"... I believe that I should register a demurral of that statement," Chachamaru said politely. "And yet I find it difficult to do so."

"Gyah!" Asuna and Setsuna chorused, having been too distracted by their drama to notice their classmate approaching.

"Hey, Chachamaru," Konoka said, managing to summon up a smile. "What brings you here this evening."

The gynoid held up a small package of what appeared to be fabric. "Negi-sensei contacted me, and asked me, in my capacity as his personal assistant, to purchase a pair of pyjamas that would fit his currently enlarged frame."

"Doi," Asuna said, rubbing her head. "Yeah, we should probably have thought of - wait, since when are you Negi's personal asisstant?" she asked, changing lanes abruptly.

Chachamaru blinked. "Since I asked whether I could become his personal assistant, and since he acquiesced," she replied. "Had he not mentioned the fact?"

"No," Asuna replied, rubbing her head some more. "He kind of hasn't." With a sigh, she resumed her progress down the hall, leading the other three along with her. "C'mon, I'll let you in the room."

"That's very nice of you, Asuna-san," Chachamaru said, since it was, and since she didn't really want to advertise the fact that one of her fingers contained equipment that could act as a skeleton key for any lock on campus.

"So, I guess Eva-chan already knows about Negi-kun's situation?" Konoka asked.

"Yes, I informed her as soon as his communication reached me," Chachamaru explained. "Her exact words on the subject were, 'Hah hah hah, that, that dumbass, hah, hah hah ha ha ha, I can't, can't believe he could, oh yes I can, hah hah ha ha ha ha ha ha, oh wow, heh heh heh heh."

"Sounds like her all right," Asuna sighed.

They reached the door, opened, trooped in. But Negi was nowhere to be seen.

He was heard a moment later, though, voice coming from the bathroom. "Chachamaru?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered.

"Thank goodness," he said, walking out wearing nothing but his boxers and a smile, and carrying a wrapped up bundle "I was hoping you could also ... take ... some ... laundry ..." His words slowed and trailed off as he realized that Chachamaru was not alone, and that he was under the observation of three of his other Ministra as well. "Um," he concluded somewhat awkwardly.

They stood there a while in silence, gazing at his firm, well-defined pectoral muscles, before, almost involuntarily, their gazes slowly dropped down his torso to what was hidden beneath his boxers.

"Hot damn," said Konoka after a second or two.

"This is very embarassing," Negi commented.

Chachamaru said nothing. She was busily trying to prevent her internal systems from overheating while at the same time saving her current logs under boring names that wouldn't attract attention from anyone who happened to view them.

* * *

After a somewhat shorter interval, involving Negi ducking back into the bathroom and Chachamaru somehow managing to pass him the pyjamas through the doorway without actually looking at him, then accepting the laundry bundle once Negi was acceptably dressed, everyone was finally a bit tired and settled down to sleep.

Except, of course, that Asuna couldn't sleep. Well, couldn't might be the wrong expression. 'Didn't really want to' and 'felt presently comfortable without' would probably have been closer to accurate. 'Was dreading the thought of the very long nap she would far too soon be taking, and so chose to go without' was an even better expansion of her feelings.

Besides which, she felt like she needed to talk to Negi about something, now that Konoka was asleep and so - she checked - was Setsuna. Her friend was seated on the floor beside Konoka's lower bunk, having covered the entire area around her with rice paper so that nobody who couldn't fly would probably make noise enough to wake the dead - or at least to wake Setsuna. Asuna expected that Setsuna had probably set up other, less obvious traps to deal with intruders who wouldn't be bothered by the more visible ones.

All of them, whether visible or invisible, would be designed to deal with people trying to get into the girls' beds, as opposed to people trying to get out of them. So Asuna felt perfectly secure stepping - where she'd once had to hop - over to Negi's nook.

"Isn't this a little backwards?" Negi asked quietly once his eyes slid open to see that she was there.

"Yeah, yeah, hilarious," she said. "We need to tell Konoka and Setsuna the truth about what happened." She paused. "And what's going to happen," she added, a bit reluctantly.

Negi's face twisted in an unfamiliar expression that she took a while to recognize as a frown. "I don't mind telling them about me, but when it comes to you -"

"I don't like lying to them, even by omission," Asuna interjected. "And -"

"When it comes to you," Negi continued, as though nothing had been said, "I refuse to give up hope that I'm going to find some way around it. If that happens, then telling them would be cruel, as we'd be worrying them for nothing."

"You have no reason for thinking you can do that," Asuna said, feeling like she'd had this discussion before. Mostly because she had.

"And I apologize for usurping your role in our normal byplay," he replied dryly.

She glared at him. "You are definitely way more aggressive when you're like this," she said, gesturing at his adult form. "You'd never say something like that to me normally."

"I am not!" Negi said defensively.

"Are too," Asuna said, then preemptively sang-song at him, "Are too, are too, are too-oo."

There was a sudden flash, and the almost inaudible sound of Setsuna rising to her feet on the floor below them as one of her alarms was set off by Asuna speaking too loudly. Asuna quickly ducked down beside Negi to avoid being seen by Setsuna and provoking ... well, she suspected that Setsuna would probably start crying if she saw Asuna sneaking around like this, and that wasn't a pleasant thing to contemplate.

It was also difficult, because she was busily contemplating something else ... specifically, the fact that she'd never been this close to Negi's adult form when they were both in their pyjamas, and the way that his eyes were staring into hers.

They lay there for a while, even long after Setsuna had finally realized that there was no intruder and settled down again.

Years later, they still weren't sure which one of them made the first move.

"This -" said Asuna, managing to get the word out in the brief interval where her lips and tongue weren't otherwise occupied with Negi's lips and tongue.

"- is - a - bad - idea?" Negi bit out a moment or so later, punctuating the words with kisses that ran down her chin, and then across her neck to the spot where he could feel, beneath his lips, the rapid pulsing of her heart.

"Yes!" Asuna agreed, breathing heavily as her hands went around his buttocks and pulled him even closer to her, almost crushing her body against his slightly larger one. "You're my little brother!"

Negi managed to pull back enough to look into her eyes, and sounded a bit annoyed when he spoke. "A, I'm not little at the moment."

"Yeah, I can feel that," Asuna groaned as their crotches ground together and the part of him that was clearly not little at all bulged against her, making her shudder from the sensation.

"And B, you started it!"

"No I -"

Anticipating that response, Negi kissed her soundly and wrapped  _his_  hands around  _her_  buttocks, just as she was doing to him.  _Peace! I will stop your mouth,_  he thought, a bit dazedly.

Asuna growled in her throat a bit at being cut off like that, but what was happening was sufficient distraction to take her mind away from that, particularly when his hands moved off the outside of her pyjama bottoms and inside, onto her actual skin. In response, her hands moved as well, but differently, around to the sides of his bottoms, so that they could be pushed down. Normally, she knew, he wore boxers beneath them, but she'd seen the only pair of boxers he had that still fit taken away in the laundry, and so beneath -

Beneath was something startlingly large, not that she had much basis for comparison. But it was large enough that when her hand shakily came around to wrap around it, rubbing it as some instinct commanded, she almost wanted to bring her other hand up to help out. But it was busy, pulling her own bottoms down.

She thought it would be enough to get them down to her hips, but then he pushed forward and his hips pushed against them, stopping his motion and making them both groan. Furiously, she shoved the bottoms down to her ankles and then kicked them off completely, rocking back so that Negi could roll on top of her.

And into her.

For a few seconds after that initial penetration, they simply lay there, breathing heavily, staring into each other's eyes. She hadn't paid enough attention in health class to know that there was supposed to be a certain amount of pain in a first sexual experience, and so didn't know that she was being spared that for whatever reason. The feeling of fullness - or, on the other side, of being surrounded - was sufficiently bewildering to both of them that it had them stunned.

And then, Negi, a quick learner if ever there was one, began to move forward, then back. Out, then in. Faster and faster, their hips grinding together as their lips met then broke away and hands reached out to clench each other and pounding and pounding and pounding and gasps loud enough to wake the dead and then, at last, the sensation of explosive release.

"Ahhh," said a voice.

Negi blinked. So did Asuna.

It hadn't been either of them.

Slowly, they turned to look to the side, where Setsuna and Konoka were gazing at them with respectively horrified and excited looks.

"Ah," both Negi and Asuna managed to say before Setsuna finally regained control of her jaw and began to make a keening noise.

Beneath it, Konoka murmured, "Pal owes me five thousand yen. Woot." With a rather smug smile on her face.

"No!" Setsuna cried out at last. "Asuna-himesama! How could you do this! I tried so hard to protect you from such things, and yet here you are, throwing away your purity as though it didn't matter at all!"

"It kinda doesn't?" Asuna offered up weakly.

Her words were more or less drowned out by Setsuna's ongoing passive-aggressive temper tantrum. "The traps! The effort I put into the traps! And yet you didn't even bother trying to prevent them from going off as you could have with Magic Cancel!"

"- that would have been kind of a good move," Negi agreed.

"I have to be able to see what I'm doing in order to do that, and they were all on the floor!" Asuna protested.

"Why, ohimesama?" Setsuna nearly wept. "Why did you do it? I know that I'm not worthy of any explanations, much less -"

"Okay, that is  _it_!" Konoka snapped. The smug had melted right off her face as she'd listened to Setsuna's complaint, replaced by the annoyance and, frankly, jealousy that she'd been feeling while watching Setsuna act like she'd been acting towards Asuna. There'd been a few funny moments, like when she'd seen Asuna try to manipulate the other girl into calling her by a very informal version of her name, like she herself did all the time. But even that had paled once she'd watched Asuna actually  _succeed_  without there needing to be a major combat event before it happened.

Konoka was Not Happy.

"O-ojousama?" Setsuna trembled.

That did not improve her Not Happiness.

"Se. Tchan," she bit out. "Remember what we talked about that one time? About being more honest about our feelings?"

"... you're going to need to be more specific," Setsuna admitted weakly. There'd been a lot of conversations like that, after all.

Konoka drew in a deep breath. "You're only a little bit upset about Asuna sneaking past your traps, riiight?" she asked. "Really, you're upset because it turned you on to watch them doing it, riiight?" She drew out the terminal expressions, to leave no question in anyone's mind that she expected any answer other than an immediate affirmation.

"B-but -" Setsuna stammered.

"I'll prove it," Konoka said. And with a surprisingly forceful shove - surprising to anyone who didn't realize that Setsuna weighed much less than she appeared - she pushed Setsuna upwards, so that her bodyguard was bent forward over the wall's edge, face much closer to where Negi and Asuna were still lying entwined. With a second smooth gesture, Setsuna's pyjama bottoms were dangling around her ankles, as were her panties.

"See?" Konoka said calmly, as she moved around to Setsuna's exposed rear end. "You're not upset, you're turned on. Which makes  _me_  a little upset, but I'll cope." She drew in another deep breath, and without further preamble, pushed her face into Setsuna's genitalia.

"Ojousama!" Setsuna shrieked. "No, you can't! It's dirty and - ahhhhhh!" Her cries lost coherency as Konoka pinched her for being such a cliche. "Ah! No, not in front of ohimesama and -"

"Dammit, what do I have to do to get you to stop with that -" Asuna started to yell, then stopped, breathed, and then said, much more quietly, "Yeah, that's a dumb question, even for me."

"Eh?" said Negi, genuinely bewildered by all of this.

Asuna pulled away from him and reached down to grab ahold of Setsuna's shoulders and lever her upper torso upwards so that they were facing each other. "It's a really dumb question," she repeated.

"Ohime-" Setsuna started to say.

She was interrupted when Asuna slammed their lips together and started to rub at Setsuna's breasts with her hands.

Konoka found herself feeling conflicted as she licked at the flower of Setsuna's joy. The conflict wasn't about having sex with Setsuna. She'd been wanting to do  _that_  ever since she'd happened to walk in on Sakura and Takane 'celebrating' together on their last night in Megalo-Mesembria, and just hadn't ever had the opportunity until right now.

Rather, she was conflicted about being happy that what Asuna was doing was preventing Setsuna from making cliched comments like 'it's dirty' or 'stop, don't, you shouldn't', while on the other hand being more than a little unhappy that what Asuna was doing was apparently making Setsuna more aroused - if the increase in juiciness was any indication - than anything Konoka herself had done.  _Maybe 'skipping to the chorus' wasn't such a good idea after all,_  she thought.

She didn't  _stop_  of course. Setsuna's juiciness was yummy. Rather, she brought her fingers into play as well, enjoying the pleasant gasp that burst from Setsuna's throat and into Asuna's mouth, making the other girl's eyes go wide. Still, the fact that two of the people she loved most in the world were enjoying themselves while she did most of the work to bring that about was ... a bit vexing.

She tongued Setsuna's clitoris and made her jerk in release, hard enough to pull away from Asuna's mouth and make harsh, almost birdlike shrieks of orgasm. For a second, as she watched her bodyguard's shoulder blades quivering, she almost thought that the wings were about to come out. She almost wished that they would.

But Setsuna collapsed after a moment, instead. Ah well.

Time to move on. "Naughty, naughty Asuna!" Konoka said as she pulled herself up to their level. "Doing that to  _my_  Setchan! I think that is unforgivable!"

Asuna, who'd looked startled at Konoka's initial comment, slowly shifted her expression into a rather ironic and knowing smile. "Uh-huh," she said. "And however might I earn your forgiveness."

"Welllll," Konoka said, glancing at Negi, who'd just watched all this wide-eyed, and at the giant between his legs that she'd only partially glimpsed as it pounded into Asuna's cleft. "I'm not sure, really," she admitted, licking her lips.

Asuna rolled her eyes. "Think  _hard_ , I'm sure it'll  _come_  to you."

That would be fun, but maybe later. She'd had a better idea. "No, I think the best way for you to understand the pain I've had to endure would be for Negi-kun to do it with Setchan," she said, nodding firmly.

"What?"

"What?" echoed Negi.

"... do I get a vote in this?" Setsuna whimpered.

"Of course not. Come on, Negi-kun," Konoka said as she hefted Setsuna's still limp body up so that she was on full display to Negi. "Don't you think Setchan is pretty? You do, riiight?"

"Well, um, of-of-of course I think Setsuna-san is very pretty, but -"

"And you want to show her that she's worthy of being loved, riiight?"

"Well, yes, certainly, but -"

"Oh, just do it, Negi," Asuna groused.

"... riiight," he muttered, feeling a bit ill-used, but nonetheless crawled over to where Setsuna was lying and staring up at him apprehensively all the same. He paused when he saw that stare. "Setsuna-san, do you not want -"

"... ojousama has decided," Setsuna interjected, lower lip trembling a bit. "Please make use of my body, Negi-kun."

Pity stabbed Negi's heart. Here was a wonderful young woman, so brave, so strong, and so fair to gaze upon. He felt himself blush a bit, remembering what he had mistaken for a confession during Mahora-fest, and how he'd actually felt a tiny sliver of disappointment when she'd tried to clarify matters, covering it up with teasing because it was easier. Setsuna was perhaps the mightiest of his companions, and yet here she was, submitting so easily.

Love was so strange.

And yet, despite everything, Konoka was right. If he turned away now, she would find a way to blame herself for his refusal. The only thing to do was to give it his all, to strive to make Setsuna feel as wonderful as, he was sure, he would feel doing this. He set his jaw firmly, and bent down to kiss her lips. They were as sweet as they had been when they'd formed their contract, so long ago, it seemed.

Her eyes flinched closed as he pushed up and into her, and so he murmured gently into her ear. "You are wonderful, Setsuna-san, wonderful." And she was. The strength that he so admired in Asuna and others was here, as well. He had to answer it with his own strength, show her that the gentleness that she feared in herself was itself a strength.

It was a heroic task, when he thought of it that way.

Meanwhile, Setsuna was busily thinking,  _I'm having sex with Negi-sensei_. Over and over and over. There was more than a little panic in the thought. And yet, also a certain amount of relief. After all, Negi never made demands of her that disconcerted and discomforted her. Except for this, right now, and that wasn't really his idea. And it wasn't like he was making her feel bad, as his ... thing ... slid up inside of her, like her lady's fingers had just a little while ago. Just ... very confused, more than anything else. And panicked. And relieved. Which of course added to the confusion.

Yet she couldn't let any of that show, for it would make him unhappy, and then he would stop doing what he was doing, and then her lady would be upset. She didn't want her lady to be upset ... or, she realized, for Negi to be unhappy. So she began to deliberately respond to it, as she had somewhat involuntarily responded to Asuna's lips and hands on herself. The memory of that drove her onward, as she strove to make everyone present as happy as could be.

It was a heroic task, when she thought of it that way.

As the two of them struggled with their heroic tasks, of course, they were being watched by Asuna and Konoka. One of the two was humming in pleasure, only partially resulting from digital manipulation of her own clitoris. The other was frowning. Once the one realized that, she pressed up against the back of the other.

"Hmmm?" said Asuna, suggestively. "Wasn't this supposed to make me feel some sort of pain?"

Konoka flushed. Events ... were, perhaps, not working out as she'd wanted them to work. "I didn't think this all the way through," she admitted reluctantly, blushing.

"And yet you are never so cute as when you're so flustered like this," Asuna murmured, then, oh so delicately, kissed the ear into which she'd just softly spoken.

"It doesn't make you feel that way?" Konoka asked, starting to fall back into Asuna's embrace. "Watching Negi-kun with -"

"A little bit," Asuna interjected. "But ..." And then she fell silent, thinking of how much there is that Konoka didn't know. Of how she feared for what will happen to Negi once Asuna was gone, of how she wanted him to find happiness without her.

"But?" Konoka prompted.

And there was something else, too - the two conflicting urges that she felt in her heart. On the one hand, the urge to make a clean break with those she would be leaving behind, so that as few as possible will mourn her passing. And on the other, the wish to leave as much of herself behind as possible, to answer the call of those thirty-two voices who drew her from her slumber as best as she can.

Konoka's had been the first voice she'd heard.

Well. One of them.

(Chisame was such a noisy person.)

"But right now," she said at last, "I'm looking at you." And she pulled Konoka down to lie on the futon with her, their lips at last colliding, hands coming up to undo the pyjama tops that had, implausibly, remained their only garments. Almost at once, Asuna's mouth descended to bite the aching-hard nipple that adorned Konoka's small breasts, as their hips moved together.

And so, on Negi's futon, Asuna and Konoka's lips came together almost as tightly and with almost as much sheer ferocity as they ground themselves together below. Konoka, with that tiny corner of her mind not given over to ecstasy, managed to wonder how Asuna knew how to do anything that she was doing. She herself was only imitating what was done to her ... with a bit drawn from vague memories of the yuri manga that Paru had slipped her from time to time after Kyoto. That had been what she'd relied on when she was finger-banging Setsuna.

Even if Konoka had been able to find the voice or the breath to ask that question, Asuna might not have been able to answer, had  _she_  had the voice or the breath to do so. She only vaguely understood how parts of her mind still contained the memories, the  _thoughts_ , of all those who had been taken into Cosmo Entelechia and then restored. There were countless memories of things she had never imagined that she might experience. Unlike a certain scientist and artist, she could say truly that nothing that was human - or demihuman - was alien to her, not anymore.

On the other side of Negi's nook, beside his desk, Negi continued to pound down into Setsuna. For this, his second sexual experience, he'd found himself trying to experiment, trying to draw her into different positions than the single one he'd used with Asuna. But Setsuna resisted, passively, being moved from the way that she lay flat on her back beneath him. It didn't take him long to realize that was what she was doing, and he promptly gave up on those ideas, for now. If this was what was making her happy, then this was what they'd do.

And from the harsh cries that abruptly burst from her throat, moments before he felt himself shuddering with release and shooting into her, it seemed that it had made her happy - or at least, satisfied something in her. He kissed her forehead once, then both of her slightly teary eyes, before delivering one last kiss to her lips.

"Negi-sensei," she murmured, making it sound a little like a prayer.

He smiled, and pulled back, glancing over his shoulder at their companions. They'd moved into a sexually charged sixty nine - as opposed, he supposed, to some other form of mutual oral sex which would be, well,  _less_  sexually charged, somehow. But Konoka, whose position afforded her a better view of the nook, looked up when she realized that the other two inhabitants had reached a climax of their activities.

"Awww," she said, affecting childishness some more. "Negi-kun, your thing looks so droopy and sad, now. Didn't you - nnnnn - didn't you like doing it with Setchan?" she asked, shaking a bit as Asuna nibbled a bit of her thigh.

"It was, it was -" he stammered in response.

She pulled away from Asuna's mouth, then, and began crawling over to him. Almost before he realized what she was doing, she had taken his softening member into her mouth and was bobbing up and down on it. (Her memories of the many more yaoi mangas Paru had shared were very helpful here.) "Mmm, tastes like you did," she said, during a brief pause to evaluate the results of her actions. "Tastes like you both did."

"How can you tell from the -" Negi started to ask.

"Oh, Negi-kun," Konoka sighed, shaking her head with the sorrow of the greatly put-upon, as she began to crawl up his body. "Just shut up and fuck me, will you?"

Well. What could someone possibly say to that, or do, except to follow the suggested course of action? Setsuna's momentary protest was interrupted as Asuna resumed and enlarged her familiarity with her best friend's person, this time, close enough that the two of them could touch, had they not been otherwise occupied.

The first time, Asuna had been trying to be quiet - unsuccessfully, but still restraining herself. Setsuna had done the same, only more so. Konoka did not even remotely bother to restrain herself, shouting and panting her joy at what she was doing, what was being done to her, how great his cock felt inside of her cunt - had she perhaps read some hetero-based smut, as well? - as she rocked up and down above his hips, grabbing his hands and pulling them up to her breasts to squeeze them while she cried out in pleasure.

She made enough joyful noise that Negi found himself worrying that it might attract attention, and rolled her over onto her back in hopes that it would silence her. No such luck - that only came when Asuna, gently directing Setsuna's hesitant movements, set her down so that her vulva was over Konoka's mouth, and what had been left there began to drip down into it. She embraced that, embraced Setsuna, as Asuna leaned over the swordswoman's shoulder to bring her lips to Negi's once more.

For a few glorious moments, all four of them were united.

And then, of course, explosion.

A few minutes later, after all four of them had caught their breath as they lay on the carpet, Konoka rolled over onto her side so that she could look lovingly at Negi. "That was wonderful, Negi-kun. I can hardly wait for our wedding."

It was honestly a bit astounding, how having regained his breath, Negi lost it again so quickly. "Wait," he gasped. "What? Wedding?"

"Well, my goodness, Negi-kun," she said, looking a little shocked. "You just took my innocence. You ended my childhood. You couldn't possibly be enough of a cad, a brute, a bounder, an enemy to all women, to do that and then not make an honest woman of me. Besides, I could be pregnant now. So we have to get married!"

"What?" Negi asked again, sounding even more strangled.

"What?" Setsuna asked, sounding even worse.

However, that gasp was actually very helpful to Negi. "Wait," he said, regaining a bit of poise. "I mean, what about Asuna-san and Setsuna-san, I mean, I -" He abruptly paused as he realized just how much of a hole he was digging for himself. "- I, I mean -"

"Well, you can't marry all three of us," Konoka replied, in the most reasonable of tones. "And Asuna, as a princess, is no doubt promised to some prince back in the magical world, with no real personality or charm. Poor you!" she added, to Asuna, who was listening to all this with wide eyes. "And Setchan, well, is Setchan, and has promised to spend her life protecting me, so you can't marry her either, because I won't let you. So all in all, I think your only real choice would be to marry me, and then I'll take Setchan as a lover-slash-bodyguard and share her with you, and we can pay occasional visits on Asuna in her new kingdom and help her cheat on her boring husband. Doesn't that sound nice?" she asked, smiling warmly.

All three of them were staring at her now.

She returned their stares with a patient, gentle gaze ... then stuck out her tongue. "Gotcha."

Collapses all around.

"Oh yeah," Konoka said, nodding as she smiled rather smugly. "Who's got two thumbs and is the  _queen_  of messing with people? This gal," she answered the rhetorical question with the predictable gesture.

* * *

Somewhat later, after they had all settled down to sleep, all together in the nook - though having resisted the temptation for further frolics - Asuna found that she still didn't want to sleep, even though now she honestly was a little tired. So she lay there, surrounded by many of the people she loved best in this world, and was happy.

"Why are you crying?" a soft voice asked into her ear.

Asuna turned slightly to see that Konoka was looking right at her though half-open eyes.

"Why?" Konoka repeated.

"Because -"  _I'm happy_ , is what she wanted to say. But that wasn't it. That would be a lie.

And so, she gave her friend-turned-lover the truth, instead. Slowly, softly, bit by bit. And Konoka's eyes slid the rest of the way open. Moments later, it was she who was crying in silence, and Asuna who tried, in vain, to still the tears.

From sweetest laughter to saddest tears, in under an hour.  _That's a teenage girl for you,_  Asuna thought, as she held Konoka close and knew that she'd have to let her go.

* * *

The next day, being a Sunday, allowed them the chance to sleep in. For once, they actually took that chance. Well, Negi, Asuna and Setsuna did; Konoka was up earlier than they were, making breakfast for the three of them. When she finally did awaken, Setsuna thought that she detected a certain tension and unhappiness in her lady's face, but it vanished as soon as Konoka saw that they were awake, and she didn't have the chance to ask about it.

Immediately after they finished breakfast - she supposed that it was technically the  _brunch_  which Negi-sensei had told her about, once - Konoka had delicately suggested that they should all have a shower, to deal with certain smells which she could detect emanating from their persons. "Yes," Konoka mused aloud. "A shower. Together."

Despite a certain naivete which perpetually embarrassed her whenever it became apparent, Setsuna was not exactly oblivious to subtext. In this case, it was not all that difficult to figure out that whatever her lady had planned, it was probably not a simple bathing experience. Setsuna found herself feeling genuinely torn, between a wish to make sure that her lady didn't do such things without her, and an equally compelling wish to make sure that her lady didn't do such things period, the latter complicated by the fact that she knew full well that Konoka had her quite thoroughly whipped. (Well, she didn't think of it in quite those terms, but it amounted to the same thing.)

"Um, um, um," Setsuna responded, quickly coming to her feet. "I can't! Not yet! I, I, I need to finish my exercise routine first! Yes, that's the ticket!"

"'Ticket'?" Asuna repeated, eyebrow raised.

"Oh, well, I suppose that you should wait until your exercises are done to shower," Konoka said, nodding. "So, have fun with that," she added, waving politely at Setsuna as she started to ever so gently pull Asuna and Negi towards the en suite door.

"Ah," Setsuna said cleverly. "Right. Okay then." Slowly, she exited, wondering why that hadn't worked out like she'd expected. But then, she supposed that she should have expected things to not work out as she expected them to, since very little lately had ... but wasn't that a paradox?

Her head hurt.

What had happened to her life? How had her dreams of glorious and honest service led her to this point? Why was she the only one who seemed at all disconcerted by what had happened last night? Clearly, the fault had to be hers, but what exactly was it?

Her head  _really_  hurt.

"Hey, morning," Kotaro said as he jogged past her in the hallway, heading back to the room he shared with Ayaka, Chizuru and Natsumi.

"Good morning, Kotaro-kun," Setsuna said politely, determined not to let her inner turmoil show.

Abruptly, Kotaro froze in place, then slowly swiveled to look right at her, eyes wide.

"What?" she asked, a bit startled.

Slowly, he walked towards her, eyes narrowing, sniffing as he approached. Abruptly, it occurred to her that Kotaro's sensitive nose might detect -

"Oh. Holy. Shit," Kotaro said, eyes wide open once more.

"... why am I being punished for not taking a shower when I wouldn't actually be showering?" Setsuna asked of no one in particular.

* * *

A few minutes later, following some quickly- and quietly-voiced warnings to tell no one of what he'd just learned, backed up by a few hints of dire consequences if he did (which didn't really intimidate him anywhere as much as Setsuna probably wanted) Kotaro was on his way, shaking his head in amazement at what a mess Negi had gotten himself into this time. He was honest enough to admit - to himself,  _never_  to anyone else - that he was a tiny bit envious of said mess. But just a tiny bit. The overwhelming majority of girls were icky.

"Welcome back, Kotaro-kun," Chizuru asked as he came in the door to their room. "How was your work out this morning?"

With a tiny minority who were absolutely terrifying. "It was okay," he said, resolving to put what had happened a few moments ago firmly out of his mind.

"Hmmm?" Chizuru asked, pausing in her tea-making activities. "Is something the matter?"

It was unwise to lie to one's alpha, but one could  _sometimes_  manage to be evasive. "Oh, just thinking about Negi's situation, you know, how he's turned into a grown-up," he said, which was true, just not quite the whole truth. "I wonder if that's gonna make it not so cool for his Ministra. Did you know that Ayaka-nechan made a pactio with him?"

"Yes, of course," Chizuru said, bringing the tea kettle over to the table. "She got hers just a few hours after I got mine."

"Oh, I guess you would know about no wait wait wait  _what?_ "

Chizuru held up a card which depicted her grinning broadly and holding an onion stalk in one hand, which she'd produced from - actually, Kotaro found himself trying very hard not to think about from whence it had been produced. "Well, of course," she said. "I'll be working with him a lot, and Chamo-san thought it might come in handy if we made a pactio. So, we did."

"Oh," Kotaro said, blinking in amazement at how casual she was about it all. "Well, yeah, I guess that makes sense, I mean, he'll be trying to get help from Naba Industries, and ... and ... yeah." He decided to cover his discomfort by sipping the tea he was even now being served.

"Dear me," Chizuru said, regarding him speculatively. "I guess you really are worried now."

"Worried?" he asked, protesting. "What've I got to be worried about? Nothing! So naturally not, then!"

"Hmmm," she said. "Didn't you do it with Natsumi-chan?"

His face went bright red. "What? NO!"

Her eyebrow went up. "Excuse me? She told me about your pactio, though not a lot about the details."

"Oh," Kotaro said, who'd been fairly sure it was impossible for someone to be this embarrassed and still go on living, so really, he should be proud of himself for his fortitude.

"What did you  _think_  I meant?"

"Ah, ah, ah -"

In a weirdly surreal moment, characters for the word _Intrigued_ seemed to float over Chizuru's head. "Well, never mind that, for now. Now, about those details ... what was it like, kissing Natsumi-chan?"

"Gwhah?" Kotaro responded calmly. Okay, that description was a blatant lie.

"Were you gentle with her? You were, right?"

In the dorm room's antechamber, Natsumi, who'd just this moment come back from the store with groceries, was musing to herself that she'd probably rather die than go in to the room proper, where she could clearly hear the conversation between two of her roommates.

"Come on now, tell me all about it!" Chizuru's voice said. "Don't be shy now, Ko-"

And then ... silence fell, and lasted for several moments.

It was broken by her voice once more, only this time sounding utterly unlike her normally confident and cheerful self - rather disturbed, instead. "Ko-Kotaro-kun?" she asked.

"No!" he said, almost yelling. "No, this is not ... it's not what it - I've gotta go!"

"Wait, don't -"

He rushed past Natsumi, who'd just barely managed to make herself invisible with her artifact. For a dizzying second, though, she had the impression that he wouldn't have noticed her even if she was in plain sight, for he seemed intent on running with his hands oddly placed over his crotch, as though covering something.

_Whawhawhawha?_  Natsumi thought.

In the dining room, Chizuru, still standing in a position that left her leaning over the table, in a way that gave onlookers a very good glimpse at her cleavage, had an utterly startled look on her face.

"... but you're only twelve," she murmured. "So ... why ..."

**To Be Continued**


	2. Chisame

"I need to go buy some more clothes," said Negi.

The remark provoked a vaguely interested grunt from Asuna as she, with Konoka's help, went over her homework. Konoka's own reaction was a bit more emphatic. "Wheeee!" she declared, grinning broadly and eyes gleaming. "Shopping trip!" Journey towards adulthood or no journey towards adulthood, relationship upgrade or no relationship upgrade, some things just demanded ecstatic squeals of delight.

It startled him enough to get him to look up from the phone book he was consulting. "Eh?" he asked. On seeing the blinding grin on Konoka's face, he remembered another shopping trip, months ago. "Ohhh," he said, knowingly. "Um, I don't think -"

Before he could conclude, Konoka's face abruptly fell. "Oh, nuts," she said, with as much force as someone might use for a much more deletable expletive. "I'm not going to be able to come with you after all, Negi-kun. My mom asked me to come see her later. I think she wants to find out just how much I've learned about magic, which is really funny if you think about it the right way," she added dryly in a way that suggested that there really wasn't a right way to think about it.

"Oh, well, then I guess -"

"I can't go either, I've got a meeting with Mana scheduled to discuss payment terms," Asuna grumbled.

"Mana-chan is really going to make you pay for what Shiori-san got her to do, then?" Konoka asked.

"... that's one of the things that we're going to negotiate, but ... well, the fact that that person didn't do anything that I wouldn't have done under the circumstances puts me in a pretty bad position," Asuna admitted. "I mean, it's not like I'm hurting for money, anymore, what with the line of credit that Godel-san set up for me. I wish that they'd let me live on what I made at my old job delivering newspapers, but I guess it would cause problems."

"Quite a few of them," Negi agreed. "Well, it's all right, I can go and get new clothes on my own, after all."

Almost before the words left his mouth, Negi realized that he was being given The Look. He'd gotten used to being given The Look over the last year, though he always disliked it. Admittedly, every time he'd gotten The Look was really his own fault, since he only ever got it in response to something he'd said which exposed some naivete on his part.

"Negi," Asuna asked smoothly. "Were you planning on buying a bunch of white shirts, green jackets, and green trousers in your new size and calling it a day?"

Negi went back to looking at the phone book. "It's a perfectly serviceable outfit, I don't see the problem -" he said, just a bit softly.

"Exactly," she said.

"Fine," Negi said with the air of a sigh. "I guess that I'll ask Chachamaru to come with me, as my assistant, and -"

"I don't know, Negi," Konoka interjected. "She's a wonderful person, but I don't think she knows much about men's fashion. It's not something she'd ever have had cause to learn about."  _And she'd just go along with whatever you proposed because she has got it baaaaaad,_  she added in the privacy of her own thoughts.

"That's true," Negi admitted. "... well, I guess we'll both have to seek out some advice from my advisor."

"Ah, good idea," Asuna said, nodding.

* * *

"Wait a minute!" Asuna protested, abruptly breaking into the scene dissolve. "He's got an  _advisor_ , too?

* * *

Hasegawa Chisame was not in a good mood.

One could say that was actually her default state. But that would be cruel, and untrue as well. Just like anyone else, Chisame's moods varied from good to bad. The difficulty was that it was often difficult for an observer - whether external or, according to some dubious sources, internal - to tell the difference between these states. But right now, Chisame thought even Poyo -  _stupid stinking lunatic mazoku, where does she get off, telling me that I'm actually **really happy**  with my stupid stinking lunatic life_ - would have agreed that she was in a bad mood.

Her idea of a blissful Sunday afternoon certainly didn't include leaving her wonderful air conditioned dorm room for any reason less pressing than 'the building is on fire'. When she'd agreed, with great reluctance, to become the little brat's adviser, her vaguely formed notion of what that would entail involved  _him_  coming to  _her_  when he needed her wise counsel, not the other way around. Yet here she was, marching through the hallway with a sour look on her face, answering the e-mail he'd sent her. And being annoyed at that development.

Well, the fact that he was using e-mail rather than the pactio she'd had forced on her (as she presently chose to remember events) or even the phone to contact her was sort of out of the ordinary. so if she had, for some strange reason, felt like being totally honest, she might have admitted that there was just a touch of worry mixed into her current mix of annoyance and discomfort. Which of course made it that much more 'fun'.

With a sigh, she arrived at the doorway and knocked, then waited for someone to say 'come in', like a normal person did. Not for her, barging in and seeing something that she shouldn't. Of course, she was well aware that the absurdity that was her life would probably lead to seeing something that she shouldn't  _anyway_ , but at least -

"It's open, come on in," she heard Kagurazaka's voice call out.

\- she could take the satisfaction of knowing she did the right thing. "Excuse me," she said, opening the door and entering the dorm room.

Naturally, the first question that popped into her head when she saw him sitting at the table was, "Why are you aged up?"

Just as naturally, the first question that popped into head after that, once she'd been given a somewhat abbreviated (and, though she didn't know it, heavily expurgated) version of the events of the previous day, was "Are you  _kidding_  me?"

"No, he's not," Kagurazaka said as she strolled back into the living room, having ducked into the kitchen briefly during Negi's explanation.

"I don't believe this," Chisame groaned. Then, shaking her head, she contradicted herself. "Wait, no, of  _course_  I do. Why shouldn't I believe this? You routinely change shapes, so of course you'd get stuck in one of your other shapes at some point. It only stands to reason - for what passes for reason in storybook land."

"Well, I suppose it is a little absurd," Negi admitted. "But, well, anyway, I really do need your help to, um, pick out some new clothes that aren't just a variation on what I normally wear. This is important," he said without much conviction.

As visions of Negi, dressed in tight black leather pants, a red leather jacket and mirror shades, walking into class and being the subject of utter humiliation began to dance through some rather vengeful sectors of Chisame's mind - the same sectors which had put Chachamaru into a bunny costume during the festival, Asuna cleared her throat. "So you and Chachamaru are going to help, okay?"

The wonderful dream died quickly. Of course it did.

"Actually, you should probably go call Chachamaru now," Asuna suggested to Negi without taking her eyes off Chisame. "I think that Chisame-chan and I need to have a little chat."

Negi proceeded to give Asuna his own version of The Look. Annoyingly, she proved impervious to it, responding by giving him a 'scoot' gesture that he reluctantly obeyed, stepping out into the hallway and leaving the room to the two of them.

"Okay, first off, that Chisame-chan thing?" Chisame said abruptly, before Asuna had even turned back to look at her after watching Negi step out. "I let Konoe call me that because, well, I can't figure out how to get her to  _stop_  calling me that without hurting her feelings and ending up cut to pieces by Sakurazaki, but I sure as hell won't take it from Akashi and certainly not from you! So quit it, already!"

"... okay, I apologize for the over-familiarity," Asuna said, after a moment. "But you do realize that Setsuna's  _not_  actually a homicidal maniac, right?"

"I realize that she's eased up a little, but I still remember how she used to glare murderous intent at anyone who made fun of Konoe even two years ago," Chisame retorted.

Asuna blinked. "Huh. I never noticed that. You're really perceptive, you know?"

"Sorry for being perceptive," Chisame answered.

"... it wasn't an insult, that's -" Asuna broke off, shook her head. "Are you like this with everybody?" she asked plaintively.

"No, only with people who drag me off for private conversations that I'm not looking forward to having," Chisame snarked, looking away.

"Oookay," Asuna sat down at the table, hands folded in front of her. "Since you seem to have a better idea of how this is supposed to go than I do, why don't you tell me what I'm trying to say to you?"

"Why not?" Chisame said, becoming more animated. "You're obviously about to tell me to stop being so damn familiar with the brat, just because because you're here, now, and you don't want someone stepping on your toes. "

"Nope."

Chisame blinked, but when Asuna didn't look inclined to elaborate on her short negation, she found herself pressing on regardless. "You don't care whether I step on your toes -"

"I'm not even sure what you mean by that," Asuna murmured.

"- but you don't want me to do anything like punching him when he pisses me off."

"I don't mind," Asuna interjected. She tilted her head slightly. "I'm honestly a little envious, I have to pull out my harisen to do that, generally. How do you manage it?"

"I don't know," Chisame growled. "Okay, so if none of that was it, what  _are_  you trying to tell me?"

Asuna stood up, walked over to where Chisame was standing, and - before Chisame could react - she hugged her. "I'm trying to thank you for having been there for him, when I couldn't be," she said, firmly but gently. "And I'm trying to ask you to keep on doing that, when -  _if_  there's ever a time when I can't be, again."

Chisame stood in frozen shock at having been hugged.

"Like, specifically, in about five minutes, because I've really got to get going if I'm not going to be late to meet up with Mana," Asuna added, shaking her head as she stepped back. "Oh, there's one other thing - Negi occasionally can use a good smack upside the head, but could you  _try_  to be a little nicer to Chachamaru? She really likes you, y'know?"

"Wha-wha-wha-" Chisame attempted to reply.

* * *

"What kind of person does that?" Chisame said somewhat later. That was what she had been trying to say to Asuna, she'd decided, which was only a moderate revision of historical fact for her. "Just hugs someone, out of nowhere, like that! Someone they barely even know, haven't ever actually talked all that much with before now, and then bam! Hugging! What kind of person does that?"

"I'm honestly as surprised by it as you are," Negi answered her as he trailed along behind her down the sidewalk, with Chachamaru walking beside him. "She didn't hug me until after we'd been living together for months."

"Yes, I believe that Asuna-san does generally require more time to become physically demonstrative of her affection," the gynoid concurred quietly. "Her interactions with Master would support this."

"Admittedly, she'd kissed me before that, so I suppose that I might not be the best example," Negi mused.

It occurred to Chisame that, to an unwitting observer who'd overheard these sentences - like several people who'd passed them on the sidewalk over the last few minutes - might find them a bit perplexing, even suspicious. (As, indeed, a few of them clearly did, judging by a quick glance back at them.) Middle school students did not normally talk about things like 'living together" or "Masters". At least, normal middle school students didn't talk about that.

And yet annoyingly, she and Negi were the ones getting looked at more than Chachamaru, who was no doubt just a a girl who liked to pretend to be a robot, in the eyes of these people, rather than -

_She really likes you, you know._

Chisame grimaced, forced herself not to think of the phrase 'a robot who liked to pretend to be a girl', and felt her teeth grinding inside her mouth.

Fortunately, they arrived at the first store that Negi had picked out as a likely place to acquire new clothing. To no one's surprise, it was a store that dealt primarily in suits.

"... it's spooky, how you can give me a Look in the same way that Asuna can," Negi said to Chisame, who was glaring at him.

She ignored that, because it was something that should be ignored. "You've already got a suit in your size. You're  _wearing_  a suit in your size. Why do you need  _another_  suit in your size?" Chisame asked.

"In case this one is dirty and I need to be somewhere while it's being laundered," Negi answered promptly.

"... it genuinely disturbs me, how you can quickly rattle off a plausible-sounding explanation like that," she said. "Fine, let's get a suit. But  _not_  green."

"Black supposedly goes with everything," Chachamaru supplied helpfully.

"That's for dresses, but ... well, it's not a bad idea."

"Oh, I don't think so," said Negi, shaking his head as he followed them into the store. "There's an implication of authority that comes from dressing in black which I'm not comfortable assuming, just yet."

"You're a teacher and one of the secret masters of the world," Chisame droned. "It's a little late to start worrying about that."

"That's -" Negi broke off, shaking his head. "We should probably not discuss that here," he said quietly, noting that the store was, as such stores generally are, occupied by a number of helpful employees who were close enough to overhear them talking. (He found it a bit disturbing that  _he_  was the one who was pointing this out to  _Chisame_.)

* * *

"This is what Seruhiko-sensei wears, isn't it?" Negi asked a few moments later as he considered a light blue jacket.

"Not precisely the same style, but the same color," Chachamaru agreed. "It would make a nice contrast with your hair."

"I wouldn't want him to think that I'm copying him, though. It might hurt his feelings. But you're right, it's not bad. Certainly better than that purple thing we looked at earlier," he added disgustedly. The two of them shook their heads in unison.

"What is it with you and suits, anyway?" Chisame asked at last, having finally had all she could stand of this. "It doesn't really seem to fit."

"Eh?" Negi said, turning to look at her. "No, this is in my size. See?" He slid his arm into one of the jacket sleeves to demonstrate.

"No, that's not what I mean," Chisame said, somehow keeping her impatience from seizing ahold of her tongue like it sometimes did. "I've seen photos of your dad, you know. I don't think he was wearing a suit in any of them. So then why do you always wear one?"

"Oh," Negi said, blushing a bit. "Well. It's what a teacher is supposed to do, isn't it?"

"You're being evasive," she told him.

"Am I?" he asked.

"You're  _still_  doing it!"

He pouted. "Well, it's a little embarrassing, you see. Other than my sister and the people in our village, the first person I'd ever met who actually knew my father was Takamichi. And practically from the first moment we met, he was telling me how much he was always striving to be like my father, which was something that I wanted to do as well, of course."

"Of course," Chisame echoed a bit more sardonically - and was promptly startled that she was speaking in stereo with Chachamaru, who favored her with a small smile.

Ignoring this byplay, Negi continued. "Since we were both following the same path, I guess you could say that I took Takamichi's style as a model to follow. I didn't realize until much later that while he does look up to and admire my father, his style is more or less inspired by his own master, Gateau-san." He shrugged.

"So the whole thing comes out of a misunderstanding," Chisame concluded.

"Also wanting to present a respectable image for my students," he added, just a bit pointedly.

"Yeah, well, respect isn't really what you've managed to inspire in a lot of them," she told him, shaking her head.

"Yes, that's been made clear, particularly after what happened last night," he answered without really thinking it through.

Normally, at this point, there would be a mention of how a silence descended upon those who were having this conversation, along with hints that it went on for a while. The truth of the matter, though, is that there was maybe only a second or so between Negi making that somewhat inopportune statement and Chisame grabbing hold of his shoulders, hefting him an inch or so off the ground, and dashing rapidly into the store's small change room, closing the door behind them.

"Excuse me," said one of the aforementioned helpful employees, approaching quickly. "It's against store policy to allow more than one person into a change room at a time, so -"

"Could you please make an exception?" Chachamaru asked, quietly looming over the helpful employee, and pitching her voice in a way as to suggest terrible fates awaiting.

"What? Happened? Last? Night?" Chisame asked as she pushed Negi up against the wall.

* * *

The interior lights were out when Ayaka arrived in the dorm room, and what illumination there was came dimly through cracks in the drawn curtains. Despite this, her reflexive announcement of her arrival had been answered, softly, by Chizuru's voice, so she knew that she wasn't alone in the room. And indeed, once she walked out of the hallway, she could see Chizuru sitting on the couch, staring at the TV, which was off. It was, to be honest, just a bit creepy.

"Um ... pardon my impertinence, Chizuru-san, but why are you sitting alone in the dark like this?" she asked.

Chizuru didn't answer immediately. Ayaka found herself wondering whether she ought to repeat it, when at last the answer did come. "I am doing this because I did something bad," she said quietly. "And since there's no one to send me to my room, I am punishing myself by these methods."

Ayaka considered this statement for a few moments. Then, nodding sharply, she went over and turned the lights on.

"Ayaka -" Chizuru started to say, looking up.

"Balloon juice," Ayaka announced.

Chizuru gaped. "... did you seriously just say 'balloon juice'?"

"Yes, I did," Ayaka replied proudly. "Why not? It's a perfectly serviceable expletive."

"And I'm certain that if any of our grandparents were present, they'd be gripped by nostalgia ... for the way that  _their_  grandparents used to talk," Chizuru mused aloud, continuing to gaze in disbelief at her room-mate.

"Be that as it may," Ayaka continued. "I utterly, utterly reject your premise. You forget that you are speaking to one who has known you since kindergarten. You are no more capable of doing something 'bad' than I am capable of doing something undignified." She ignored the coughing fit into which Chizuru inexplicably descended at that point. "You are sometimes stern, other times mischievous, but you could never do anything that would deliberately hurt someone or their feelings. So then. How did you come to this misunderstanding?"

Chizuru was well-aware that she had a better chance of flapping her arms and flying to the moon than she did of dissuading Ayaka from pursuing this subject. So, not without a certain relucance on her part, she told the tale of what had happened. When it was over, she took a certain grim satisfaction in seeing that Ayaka was thoroughly disconcerted by what she'd just heard.

"He, he had a, a -" the other girl stammered, blushing brightly.

"Boner," Chizuru supplied.

"That, yes," Ayaka bit out, blush now providing far more light than the windows did. She shook herself, and resumed speaking somewhat more normally. "All right, that's ... disturbing. But I don't see any misdeed by you in any of this, Chizuru-san."

The formality of Ayaka's speech, in contrast to her own easy familiarity with the girl, usually didn't bother Chizuru very much. But now, it was grating a bit. "I provoked him, Ayaka. It's one thing to tease someone, but it's quite another to do things that make a growing young man so uncomfortable that he feels he has to run off like he did. I did wrong, and I'm not sure how to make it right."

Ayaka was silent, which was rather disturbing in itself. At last, she spoke up. "Does Natsumi-san know about this?"

"I think so," Chizuru replied with a nod. "She came in right after he left, acted like nothing was wrong, and then quickly went out again. I hope she went after him. I hope that she found him."

"Are you sure that you hope that?" Ayaka asked. "After all, she might get angry that he was -"

"She's not that kind of a girl," Chizuru interjected sharply ... then added, more somberly, "I don't think so, at least."

"... so let me guess, you're also upset that you might have hurt her feelings, too," Ayaka said after another moment of silence.

"It's disturbing, how you can be so perceptive sometimes -"

"You really love those two, don't you?" Ayaka interjected.

"- and so  _not_  at others," Chizuru said with a sigh. "I care about them, yes, but you know perfectly well who I love, Ayaka." And having said that, she watched Ayaka grow stiff and uncomfortable, again.

"We talked about this," Ayaka said, softly, after a moment.

"Yes, we did," Chizuru agreed.

"I accept your feelings," Ayaka continued, very precisely, very formally. "But I ... I cannot, do not, return them. I thought that you understood that."

"I understand it completely," Chizuru said. To Ayaka, she almost sounded amused as she continued. "I understood it before we went to Wales. I understood it as soon as I understood my own feelings, four years ago. I've known you as long as you've known me, Ayaka. I never expected you to return my feelings."

"Then why?" Ayaka asked, aware that her frustration was coming out in her own tone, but feeling as helpless as she always did to control it. "Why did you say that, why do you keep on -"

"Because it is beautiful, this never-to-be-requited love of mine, and the fact that it causes me pain is a part of its beauty." She tapped the beauty mark on her face, legendarily a sign of tears shed.

"I don't want you to know pain because of me!"

"Oh, dear." Chizuru actually chuckled.

"It's not funny!"

"No, but you are, dear one. Would you really be happier if I gave up on you and started chasing after Kotaro-kun?" she asked, somewhat abruptly.

Ayaka looked like she wanted to say, 'yes', or possibly something even more emphatic in agreement. But she didn't say anything.

"Well, then, perhaps I will," she mused. "Given the givens, he and Natsumi-chan haven't made nearly as much progress as I'd like. A little rivalry might help the girl. And it'd be good practice."

"Practice? Practice for what?" Ayaka asked, now thoroughly disconcerted.

Chizuru's smile took on a decidedly scary aspect. "For when I start chasing after Negi-kun. He's an awfully good kisser, after all."

Ayaka's jaw dropped.

"I'll share him, of course," Chizuru offered.

* * *

"I'm actually sort of proud of you, Chisame-san," Negi said - well, croaked, since with her forearm over his throat, it was a little difficult to talk. "You haven't once mentioned that I'm going to get stabbed. That's real progress in dealing with your anger-management problem."

"I had a little insight a little while ago," Chisame hissed.

"That's good, insight should be encouraged, and - I'll shut up now."

"Basically, when I was talking to Kagurazaka, I realized that the only way that I can possibly be doing these things to you is if you  _let_  me do them," she growled. "In other words, you  _want_  me to do this to you. Because you know, if I do this to you, I'll be embarrassed afterwards and apologetic like I always am, and it'll be a great distraction from what you just said."

"I'm not that Machiavellian," Negi protested awkwardly.

"Well, it's not going to work!" Chisame snapped, ignoring that protest. "Tell me what happened last night! For a fleeting moment, I figured they must have dressed you up in girls' clothes again, but then I realized that doesn't work with your current look! So what was it? What happened last night"

Despite everything he'd just said about not being Machiavellian, Negi realized that he could make up a plausible sounding story. Perhaps he could claim that Konoka had, on seeing his adult form again, confessed that she actually found herself just as attracted to him as she was to - well, that she was willing to go through with the marriage arrangements that the Headmaster kept pushing on them, and how there'd been chaos in the room after that revelation. All of which would have been  _technically_  true, while avoiding the whole truth.

But ...

This was Chisame. This was the girl who wanted to live a normal life, who'd put it on hold to follow him into danger and chaos and definitely-not-normal events. Who'd agonized over a decision of whether to save his life or his dreams. Who smiled bravely at him when he was reborn.

This was Chisame. He couldn't lie to her.

So he didn't. "Sex happened," he said - rather weakly, he had to admit.

Chisame gaped. "Sex happened," she repeated.

Negi nodded to the best of his ability, considering the forearm obstructing the movement of his neck and all that.

"You ... and Kagurazaka, right?" she asked. "That almost makes sense, she's all touchy-feely now. But, but why did ... oh, God, don't tell me you also did it with Konoe, too?" she exclaimed.

He nodded again. "And, well, also with Setsuna-san. I suppose I should just call her Setsuna after this, but somehow -"

"You had a fucking foursome for your first time!" Chisame almost squeaked - her voice was pitched high, but avoiding loud volume. "What is this, I don't even -" And then she fell ominously silent.

"And, well, all of the girls were also with each other, but I suppose that's not really the issue here," Negi continued. "Um ... I know that it was wrong, but ... well, I can't really apologize for it, since I really, really enjoyed it, and, well, Setsuna wasn't happy but I think she has problems  _being_  happy that I can't really help her with, and Konoka and Asuna seemed pretty okay with it when we did it again this morning in the shower and -"

"Okay," Chisame said at last. "I just can't take it anymore. So that's how it's going to be, huh? Fine. If that's what Kagurazaka was talking about, then that's how it's going to be.  _Fine._ " And with that last, hissed word, she reached down with the hand that wasn't pressed against his throat, and yanked the end of his belt out of its loops, momentarily tightening it enough to make him squeak a bit (in surprise, not pain) before it loosened and released the buckle in the process. Then her hand went down into the pants which were loose on his hips, and wrapped around the member inside them.

"We're going to fuck," Chisame announced.

"Wait, no," Negi babbled. "This, this is a bad idea, and strange things are coming out of your mouth again!"

"You say that too damn often!" Chisame sneered as she continued to jerk his hardening member.

"Twice!" he yelped. "I've said that twice! And it's true!"

"Whatever! Strange things are about to go into my mouth, too!" And with that, she promptly suited her actions to her declaration, dropping to her knees on the change room and wrapping her lips around the head of his unit.

"Gyargh!" Negi said, any resistance he might have put up to this act paralyzed by the sensations she was provoking in him. "No, this is a terrible idea!" he protested nonetheless. "I'm sure that the people in the store can clearly hear what's going on in here!"

* * *

"I can clearly hear what's going on in there!" protested the first employee who'd come over to object, for the moment seeming more morally outraged than frightened of Chachamaru, who was - without trying terribly hard - holding her back from charging towards the door to the change room. The fact that she was doing that - without trying terribly hard - was keeping the other employees (and one or two customers) from approaching too closely.

"Perhaps you are imagining things," Chachamaru suggested.

"No I'm not!"

"Perhaps things are not as they seem."

"Yes they are!"

"Are you familiar with the concept of elephant privacy?" Chachamaru asked, very patiently.

"Ye- N- What?" the employee burst out at last, genuinely bewildered.

"Elephants are, of course, far too large to employ any manner of camouflage when they are engaged in carnal activities with each other. Therefore, whenever they are doing so, other members of the herd will politely ignore them and make as much noise as possible to scare away would-be predators who might take advantage of the coupling elephants distraction. In a way, it is a celebration, of sorts."

"... what ... what in the world does that have to do with this situation?" the employee asked, still dumbfounded.

"Nothing, really. I just thought it was an interesting story. In any event, please don't disturb the people I love, or I will become unhappy."

"Yes!" shrieked a female voice from inside the changing room.

* * *

"Yes yes yes!" Chisame repeated herself somewhat more quietly as her back and her head bumped against the rear wall of the change room while, down between her legs, Negi had assumed a position much like the one she'd been in a few moments ago, licking and sucking at her cleft. The motions which had led to this exchange of postures, as well as getting Chisame's jeans off of her legs and onto the floor, had been complicated and difficult to describe - though admittedly it might only have seemed that way to Chisame's perceptions, which were somewhat disoriented at the moment.

"Get up here," she gasped after a moment.

Negi pulled away from her and stood shakily up, so that their faces were together and their crotches were touching as well. "Are, are you sure -" he started to ask.

She slapped a hand over his mouth. "See, I have this feeling that I'm supposed to give you this speech about how you're drawing away from us -"

"Nuh, duhdz -" Negi tried to protest.

She ignored him. "- and how I don't want that, how I'm going to do whatever I have to do to keep you with us, and all kinds of shit like that, but screw all that! Yes, this is what I want! So hurry up and -"

Anticipating her words slightly, Negi reached down, adjusted himself, and then pushed his length up into her. Behind her glasses, Chisame's eyes went wide. Whatever else she'd been about to say was reduced to a short gasp of pain.

"Chisame-san!" Negi gasped, getting his mouth clear of her hand quite easily.

"I! Don't! Believe it!" she hissed. "All that crap I went through this summer, all the diddling I've done in my room, and I'm still a virgin?"

"D-do you want to stop -" he asked.

"NO!" she snapped, startling him. And with that, she flexed her hips, bringing them up to wrap around his waist so that her ankles crossed behind his back, so that he was pounding her against the wall.

"Tell me I'm pretty!" she cried out a little while later.

"No!" Negi replied. "You're beautiful, not pretty!"

"Damn liar!" Chisame snapped. "I'm not beautiful, I know I'm not, you don't have to make fun of me! Nobody with zits like -"

"What zits?!" Negi snapped right back. "You're a beautiful, charming and sweet person whom I'm glad to know, you make me happy when I'm with you, if anything ever happened to you I don't know what I'd do, Chisame, I lugh oo!"

The last words were muffled by Chisame's hand. "Don't say such stupid things!" she yelled. "Not even, not when we're - I don't - I - nyaaaaagh!" she concluded at last, the primal scream making its way up her throat from where her orgasm had finally exploded, triggering his own, equally noisy release.

They collapsed to the floor when they were done, breathing heavily (in her case, at least.)

After a moment, Negi reached out to press his own hand over Chisame's mouth, staring deep into her eyes as he did so.

She blinked, then understanding dawned. Still, she hesitated for a moment, before making noises approximated by the sounds, "Uh lugh oo, oo."

At that point, there was a rather sharp knock on the door. "Excuse me, is everything all right in there?" asked the helpful employee, doing her level best to pretend that this wasn't a rhetorical question.

* * *

"I can't believe I did that," Chisame repeated tonelessly as she walked down the street ahead of Chachamaru and Negi.

Several minutes, and a few reiterations of Chisame's inability to credit her own actions, had passed since they left the store, having purchased several complete suits - in a variety of colors and styles, of course - and left a generous tip for the employee who'd been  _so_  helpful in picking them out and  _so_  level-headed about accepting that there was no proof that anything untoward had gone on in the changing room. (Bribery - was there anything it  _couldn't_  do?) Aside from Chisame's abrupt change of attitude - which was honestly not all that surprising, really, even if she did go through them with breathtaking frequency - Negi thought that things had gone pretty well, all told.

"You're thinking that things went pretty well, all told, aren't you?" Chisame hissed, abruptly rounding on him. She was starting to find the fact that she couldn't loom over him like she'd been able to do before to be pretty frustrating.

"Well, didn't they?" he asked, then flinched in anticipation of the punch that was sure to follow.

"Oh, you would think that, wouldn't you?" Chisame growled.

"... yes, I guess I would," Negi agreed, relieved that no punch seemed to be in the offing, for whatever reason.

"I think they went well, too," Chachamaru said happily from beside and a little behind Negi. "Really, the only way things could get better is if I had some more kittens."

"Would you like some?" he asked her abruptly. "I think there's a pet store nearby."

Chachamaru considered it while Chisame stared at the two of them in mute fury. "No, I don't think so," she said at last, sounding just a little regretful. "The ones that I have now consume a great deal of my time, though I have found homes for several of the older ones. It would be selfish, in any event, to purchase more simply for my own satisfaction. But I appreciate the thought nonetheless, Negi-sensei."

"You're welcome."

"You're also nuts!" Chisame yelled at length. "Why aren't you getting mad about this?"

Chachamaru blinked. "Why should I get mad? Two of the people I care about most in this world have grown closer together. This is an occasion for joy on my part, not sorrow or anger."

"You - you -" Chisame bit out, then made an incoherent roaring noise. "I'm going to wind you up so damn hard!"

Now Chachamaru's smile seemed to grow just a bit ... mischievous? Or possibly sensuous? "If it's Chisame-san, then that's all right. Really, it would be nice if the two of you  _both_  -"

"Gaaaaah!" Chisame began stomping away from the two of them.

"Are you really all right with this?" Negi asked Chachamaru quietly.

"The thought of both of you turning my key almost makes my circuits overload with anticipation," the gynoid answered with total candor. "I hope it will feel much better than when Asakura did it."

"Uh," said Negi, now flustered. "That's, that's -"

"Not what you meant. Of course. Yes, I am all right. She can give you what I never can, Negi-sensei," she told him.

"Oh. Um. Well ... I'm happy that you're happy, Chachamaru-san. Um ... are you going to tell Master about this?"

Chachamaru feigned a sigh. "I believe that my directives require me to do so," she admitted. "If you are concerned -"

"No," he said. "I'm just ... I don't know how she's going to react," he admitted at last.

"What the hell are you two standing around whispering for?!" Chisame yelled back at them, having realized at last that they weren't following along behind her.

"Much like that, I should think," Chachamaru opined.

* * *

Haneoka Sei considered herself to be a moral person. In this she was mistaken; most people who consider themselves moral people are, and the revelation of the same is usually just as unpleasant for them as it was for Sei. She was coping with the realization that her principles were for sale - as demonstrated by her acceptance of a rather large 'tip' earlier that day - by spending her ill-gotten gains on coffee at a local coffee house, and complaining about the situation to the remarkably patient person who'd been sitting at the table beside hers when she'd arrived.

"I mean, okay, if people want to duck into the change room for a little make out time, you'd probably look the other way for a while," she explained. "But those two? Clearly having sex! What the hell is the world coming to, when middle school students are popping into change rooms to have sex!" She drank her coffee, then continued, a little more quietly. "I mean, I can see what she saw in the guy. Really, really hot for a Westerner. I think he was English, or something. That smile of his made me go weak at the knees. But dammit, no matter how hot you are, you shouldn't be having sex in a change room! Don't you think?"

"I agree completely," said Asakura Kazumi. "Tell me more about these two, okay?"

**To Be Continued**


	3. Kazumi

"You want to know about my plans for the future?" Asakura asked, smiling like she almost always did, while leaning back against the classroom wall. "Interesting question. It's really rude, of course, to answer a question with a question, so I hope you'll forgive me if I ask what prompts your interest. Which is technically not a question itself."

"Oh, of course not," Setsuna agreed, then shook her head quickly. "Or rather, I mean, of course I'll forgive you. Um. What I mean is ... I'm honestly not sure why I'm asking. Well, I know why I'm asking you, I mean, you seem to have, or at least, you seem to me to have a certain ..." She paused, waving a hand in the air beside her head as though to simulate the motion of her thoughts.

" _Je ne sais quoi_?" Asakura supplied.

"I don't know what that means," Setsuna admitted.

"... right. You're saying that I seem like the sort of person who has already worked out what they want to do with their life. Well ... yeah." She nodded and held up her notebook. "I suspect that I'm going to be working on following Negi-kun's life story for a while to come. I won't be able to publish it for a long time, after all. But when the two worlds start coming closer together, then it's all going to come out, and I'm going to be right there in the thick of it." Her grin was almost fierce.

"That does sound like a very admirable goal," Setsuna agreed, smiling back at her. "Thank -"

"And the story keeps taking some really interesting twists, too," Asakura added. "Like this thing where he's suddenly all grown up."

Setsuna's smile faded. "You, uh, you heard about that," she said, not really making it a question.

"Um, yeah," Asakura replied, just a little sarcastically. "Come on, Setchi, it happened - well, sort of happened - right in front of two of the biggest gossips in class. After two days?  _Everybody_  knows at this point."

"Oh dear," Setsuna groaned, too concerned about the fallout from this to even briefly worry about the fact that she'd just gotten another nickname. "Well, in the interests of getting the story straight -"

"Always a priority for me."

"- he's not grown-up, he's ... well, he's our age," she concluded.

"Old enough to be thinking about their future plans, in other words," Asakura asked archly.

"Well, yes."

"... and old enough to be having sex, apparently."

"Damn," Asakura added, a moment or so later, as she regained her footing in the girls bathroom. "I mean, I knew you were fast, Setchi, but getting me all the way from our class to here in, man, how long? A few seconds? Should Misora be worried?"

"How?" Setsuna squeaked. "How did you know that Negi-kun has done it with me, and ojousama, and Asuna-himesama?  _How_?"

Kazumi stared at her for a few moments, before answering, in a very gentle and calming tone, " _You_  told me."

"Ah!" Setsuna cried, covering her face. "Curse your newshound instincts! You have obviously deduced the horrible truth from some subtle movement of my facial features!"

"... sure, let's go with that," Asakura agreed, since she suspected that clarifying the actual situation would probably lead to the cute bird girl committing harikiri or something like that. "And he also did it with Chiuchi."

"Eh?" asked Setsuna, dropping her hands. "With Chisame? I didn't know that!"

"Newshound instincts."

"Of course, of course," she said. "Red-haired demon," she added, much more quietly.

Asakura caught that, but, under the circumstances, it was probably better to just let it slide for now. "So it's finally happened," she narrated. "The little heartbreaker has at last embraced his destiny, and, more literally, a bunch of the girls who've always been around him. Who will be the next to surrender to his monstrous charm?" She sighed. "It'd make one hell of a story."

"No!" Setsuna cried, waving her hands in Asakura's face. "You definitely can't -"

"'- tell anyone,' yes, yes, I know," Asakura interrupted wearily. "Even without the magic aspects of it, I'm pretty sure the student newspaper wouldn't print it, anyway. Relax, Setchi."

"And please stop calling me that!" Setsuna cried, continuing to wave her hands.

That, of course, she ignored. "Besides, I kinda feel sort of responsible for this whole situation, what with the 'Kiss Negi-sensei for big prizes' thing a while ago, and the way I pushed him to accept Chachamaru as his secretary, and probably other stuff, too. But anyway, I just want to have a talk with the boy, and tell him that he should probably slow down before he starts building an actual harem. I mean, those are funny in stories, but not so much in real life, don't you think?"

"I agree, I agree," Setsuna agreed. "Such playboys are the enemies of all women."

"... eh, I wouldn't go that far," Asakura said, grinning broadly once more.

Then Setsuna frowned. "Wait. I thought you were gay."

Once again, Asakura regained her footing a moment or so later. "The heck?" she asked, staring incredulously at Setsuna. "Leaving aside the incredibly rude assumptions you're making about my personal life, how does that question even remotely follow from what I was saying?"

"Well, if you don't have any objections to Negi-sensei turning into a playboy, then you must be in favor of it, and so you must want have that sort of interest in him as well, and so -" Setsuna continued to demonstrate her notion of subtlety.

"There are gradations between those two extremes, you know!" Asakura protested. She cut off Setsuna's response with a wave of her hand. "I'm  _not_  in favor of the notion of Negi-kun being a playboy, whatever that means in your messed-up notions, but I  _am_  in favor of anything that puts a little bit of happiness in that kid's life! He's had it rough, and it's only going to get harder from here with what he's taken on himself. So if he wants to fool around with a few girls, and they don't mind, I say let him."

"... so then you are gay?" Setsuna asked, eyebrows high on her forehead.

"Nghhhh," Asakura replied, yanking her hair in annoyance. A deep breath later, she continued speaking more calmly. "Why exactly are you under the impression that I'm that way inclined?" Perhaps a bit  _too_ calmly.

"Well, there was the way you kept encouraging ojousama and I to try kissing each other, saying it's perfectly natural for girls our age to experiment a little," Setsuna answered.

"It  _is_!"

Setsuna ignored that interjection, as it was wholly irrelevant to her theme. "Which would imply that you've done it yourself," she concluded.

Asakura coughed. " _If_  I have, and it's nobody's business but mine if I have, then it is perfectly natural and understandable, and does not mean that I am gay," she concluded.

"So have you?" Setsuna pressed.

"What did I  _just now_  say about it not being anybody else's business?"

"Have you?" Setsuna repeated.

"Sakurazaki, seriously, why do you want to know about my sex life?"

"You know about mine!"

"... craaap," Asakura groaned.

"Well?" Setsuna demanded. She was somewhat surprised by how good it felt to be the one making demands for once. It wasn't that she minded submitting to her mistress's will, quite the contrary, but ... well, that was a line of thought that shouldn't go anywhere.

"Okay okay okay," Asakura replied. Then she took a deep breath. "No," she answered.

Setsuna stared. "No?" she repeated.

"No, I've never experimented with other girls. I don't have any objection to it, but, well, the only other girl I've ever spent enough time around to be comfortable enough to do that sort of thing with is Sayo, and ... well, not only is she about a million times more conservative than I am and still crushing on some half-remembered guy from back then, but there's also the whole thing about her being a ghost and thus not really susceptible to any kissing type actions that I might want to undertake. So, there you have it."

Normally, Asakura was pretty good at picking up on the mood of the people with whom she was talking. That was a pretty essential skill for someone who wanted to be a newshound, after all. But everyone had off-moments, and this was proving to be one of hers, as she took Setsuna's silent gaze at her for an incredulous disbelief.

"Seriously, I've never done it. I always sort of wanted to, but I never had the chance. When you get right down to it, I'd have to say that I'm kind of jealous of girls like you and Kono-chin, who - Did you just hear a grinding noise just now? Oh, never mind. Like I was saying, I'm jealous of girls who do have such a close tight bond, and I guess I tease you to make myself feel better. I'm sorry if it's made you feel uncomfortable, and I'll try to stop doing it from now on. Wow, I really actually do feel a lot better getting this all off my chest. Thanks -"

And that was when Setsuna punched the bathroom wall right beside Asakura's head, leaving a clear impression of her knuckles and alerting the other girl to her misreading of Setsuna's mood.

Asakura's eyes darted to the side, then turned back to look at Setsuna, who was still giving her that silent gaze. "Ummm, Setsuna-san? Would I be correct in concluding you've become a tad bit upset at me for some reason?"

"Why no," Setsuna answered in a silkily smooth voice. "I'm not the least bit angry."

"Oh, shit," muttered Asakura, who had seen  _The Mikado._

"It doesn't upset me at all to learn that my mistress might very well have been drawn in the direction of her recent misbehavior as a result of your jealous trickery. I'm not outraged by your referral to her by an overly familiar nickname. Well, actually, I am a bit infuriated by all of that." Setsuna took a deep breath, and smiled beatifically. "But I do not believe in violence."

Asakura silently and ( _quite_  involuntarily) expressed disbelief.

"Except against persons who have deliberately attempted to harm me or my charges," the bodyguard clarified. "Which you have not. So therefore, I am going to return your  _accidental_  misdeeds with a good one on my part.  _Pucker up, sugar lips,_ " she concluded, somewhat less silkily.

"Wha -" said Asakura, who then found it somewhat hard to speak on account of being kissed.

It was funny, because even though she'd already had a few first hand, close-up demonstrations of exactly how strong Setsuna was, Asakura still found herself surprised at how  _easily_  the other girl was able to lift her completely up off the floor, and then smoothly shift her over to one of the bathroom sinks, dumping her butt into it so that her legs splayed widely. "W-wait a minute, now," she protested feebly. "This isn't right!"

"How very true," Setsuna agreed fiercely as she slid Asakura's skirt further up her hips. "I am in total agreement that one should definitely wear spats beneath these skirts. And yet your protests are hypocritical, for I see only panties here. Indeed, ones almost as naughty as those of Ayase-san!" Two fingers lanced down, twisted the string of the panties around themselves, and drew them so forcefully that they snapped in an instant.

It was also faintly bewildering how the first thing that went through Asakura's head was the question, 'How does she know about Yuetchi's panties?' Admittedly, it only stayed there a few seconds, to be replaced by more immediate concerns. "No, this is - you're cheating on Konoka-san! You shouldn't do that!"

"Go ahead and call her Kono-chin," Setsuna growled as she tore the other panty string and yanked the cloth between the tatters back. "And as for that, free love for all seems to be her motto, and so I will honor ojousama's beliefs, which she herself is doubtless exploring by having sex with Asuna-himesama or somebody right at this very moment!"

* * *

In fact, right at the moment, Konoka was sitting in class like the girl that she usually pretended to be, frowning heavily and wondering why Setchan had picked today to cut class, and suffering through listening to Fate perfectly enunciate a passage from New Horizon which - oh, so coincidentally - happened to be on the subject of missing one's friends when they weren't around.

Of course, he wasn't making her read any of it. That would have been  _too_  pointed.

Nonetheless, she was not having a good time. And she quietly swore, as others before her had, that their substitute teacher was going down.

* * *

"But still -" Asakura tried to protest.

"There's only one way that I'm stopping, Asakuchi!" Setsuna snapped.

" _Asakuchi?_ " the redubbed redhead repeated, horrified.

"All you need do to make me stop is to say, 'Please, Setsuna-sama, I do not wish to ever engage in experimentation with girls! It is wrong for two girls to do such things together! I am a nosy know-it-all who actually knows nothing!'" She glared at Asakura.

"... p-p-please - ah, no, I can't do it! I refuse to claim to be a know-it-all!" Asakura cried, covering her face with her hands. "Please be gentle!"

 _The one part of that which is actually true, and she balks at it,_  Setsuna griped inwardly, but she was committed now. Taking a deep breath, she dropped her mouth down between Kazumi's spread thighs and began doing to her the things that she remembered Asuna and her mistress doing to  _her_ , albeit a bit more forcefully than they had.

"Oh, holy shiiiiiiiitttt!" Asakura shrieked in abject ecstasy.

It seemed to be effective.

* * *

Several minutes and a slightly smaller number of toe-curling orgasms later, Asakura poked her head out of the washroom door and looked down the hallway quickly before stepping the rest of the way out into it. "I think the coast is clear."

"That's nice," said a faint voice from inside the bathroom. "I'm considering drowning myself in one of the toilets."

The red-head let out a sigh. "Get out here," she said rather forcefully.

A moment later, she was joined outside the washroom by a Setsuna whose face was almost as red as her own hair and who steadfastly refused to meet her eye.

"Would you stop that, please?" Asakura asked wearily. "I'm not mad at you."

"You should be," Setsuna said to the floor, or at least directed her words as well as her gaze in that general direction. "And moreover, I am disgusted with myself. I have betrayed ojousama!"

"What about the whole thing where she's probably screwing someone else right now?" Asakura asked, eyebrow lifted.

Setsuna flinched. "I have no proof of that," she said. "And even if I did ... even if I did ... I know that ojousama's heart is too vast to ever be given to one person! She can love the whole world!" For a change, this was directed at the ceiling.

"Okay, don't go giving her ideas like that," Asakura advised. "Seriously, Setchi -"

"Are we back to thaaat?"

"Keep it up and I'll start calling  _you_  sugar lips," she snapped. "Look, I'm not angry at you, and you shouldn't be angry at yourself. That was great, and I'm accepting that it being great was all that it was - I'm not expecting you to suddenly fall in love with me and I'm certainly not about to fall in love with you." She reached out to touch Setsuna's chin, and lifted it - with some difficulty - so that the other girl had to look at her. "But I do care about you, and I want you to start forgiving yourself, okay?"

"... thank you, Asakura-san."

"Eh, call me Kazumi."

"... Asakuchi?"

"Seriously, call me Kazumi. Anyway, we'd better get to class, and start thinking up a really good excuse for why we're so late," she said, turning to head down the corridor.

Fate was standing in front of them. "Class has been over for some time now," he announced quietly.

Setsuna and Asakura froze. (Not literally.)

"The sheer amount of detention you two have just incurred beggars belief," he added.

* * *

"That guy is definitely going down," Asakura declared as she wrote "I will not cut Mr. Fate's class ever again" in English, over and over again on the board.

"What is a dunce, anyway?" Setsuna asked as she sat in the corner wearing a rather ridiculous-looking hat.

* * *

Just as even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea, even the longest detention eventually comes to an end, and having spent far more time in each others company than they truly wished, Setsuna and Kazumi parted company with a shot wave rather than any more effusive farewells. Setsuna's thoughts were elsewhere, anyway, having returned to the question of the future.

Despite the fact that she had lately demonstrated that she could and would seize the initiative, she was inclined to minimize that as a momentary aberration. For the most part, she felt like she was just going along with the flow, rather than making her own way towards the future that everyone else seemed to have a good idea about. What sort of worthless friend did that make her to -

Okay, in the interest of brevity, let's just do the highlights, shall we?

"Nooo!" Setsuna groaned. "That isn't a future! It's not even a delusion! Just a sick fantasy! What is wrong with -" At this point in her self castigation, she realized that she was not alone.

"You are soooo stupid," said Evangeline as she put her in a rather complicated shoulder lock. "You don't even know what's going on with them, do you?"

"Oh, hey, Eva-chan," said Asuna as she and Negi walked up. "Having fun with Setsuna, huh?"

"My disciples," Evangeline announced a few moments later in the resort. "We shall have a final lesson together."

Magical battle ensued.

"You mean, Negi-sensei has become an immortal monster, like Evangeline?" Setsuna asked, startled.

"Kind of early to say for sure, but pretty much yeah," said Rakan, as he, Eishun and Albireo watched on.

"It is soooo cool," gloated Godel.

"You are a such a jerk," snapped Takamichi.

"At least there's going to be plenty of girls to look after him, even if I'm not there to do it," said Asuna as she leaped down do join the battle.

"Wait, what do you mean, 'if I'm not there to do it'?" asked Setsuna, just a little too late for Asuna to answer.

"Oh, I guess you didn't know about the whole thing where she's going to go to sleep for a hundred years to save the Magical World then?" asked Albireo.

The fight looked to be over and the combatants were of course quite naked as Setsuna jumped down and stormed over to slap Asuna across the face. "Why didn't you tell me?" she cried.

"... sorry," Asuna said.

"Is it just me, or is that a bit more of a passionate embrace than you'd expect of two best friends?" asked Eishun, frowning a bit.

"You really want to talk about that?" asked Albireo. Rakan was too busy leering to say anything.

"It's probably just the heat of the moment," said Kazumi.

"... when did you get here?" asked Takahata, startled.

"A while ago."

* * *

Asuna had occasionally found herself wondering why, since Evangeline was well-documented for hating the sun, she had bothered to give her resort a relatively normal day-night cycle. It would surely have been simpler to just have it night all the time, so that she could be comfortable. When she'd asked Negi about it, he'd opined that she did that for the comfort of her guests, because Evangeline was actually a very, very good and kind person. While agreeing in principle, Asuna had developed the suspicion that Evangeline had simply been too lazy to fiddle around with the settings like that. (Either that, or she liked the sun more than she was willing to admit - or at least, liked  _sleeping_  in the sun, like a cat.)

Regardless of her reasons, that false night had fallen in the resort shortly after they'd gotten all the mess from the aborted duel cleaned up. ("They", here, referred to Negi and Asuna, assisted by some of Chachamaru's sisters. Further evidence for the 'just plain lazy' hypothesis had been given by the way Evangeline had sauntered off despite having made most of the mess.) And now Asuna was enjoying a quiet mug of hot cocoa as she stood on one of the castle's balconies, overlooking the battlefield.

She heard a footstep behind her and turned. "You calmed down, now?" she asked Setsuna.

Setsuna nodded. "Does ojousama know?"

Asuna flinched slightly, then answered, "Yes. I told her, well, that night. Don't go getting mad at her for -"

"I'm not going to do that," Setsuna interjected.

"Well, good."

"I'm still kind of mad at you, though," she added.

"That's okay."

"And I still think running away and cutting down anyone who dares to stand in our path is a perfectly valid alternate plan," she continued, a little defensively.

"... okay, that's not so much okay, and stop acting like a homicidal maniac when I go to some trouble to tell people that you aren't one."

Setsuna pouted momentarily. "That isn't what I came here to tell you about. Um. I don't know quite how to tell you this ... but Asakura knows."

"Well, yeah, of course she knows, she was standing about ten feet away from you when you asked the creepy pervert about the situation," Asuna replied, baffled that Setsuna felt the need to tell her this.

"No, no, no." Setsuna rubbed her head. "I mean, she knows about ..." She waved her hand vaguely.

"... she knows about Evangeline's secret stash of really good cocoa?" Asuna asked, genuinely mystified.

"Nyargh."

Once she was again calm enough to use her words, Setsuna spoke quickly and clearly. "Asakura knows about Negi-sensei and his sexual adventures with you, and me, and ojousama, and Chisame-san."

Asuna gaped. "What? How did she -" The gape turned into an annoyed expression. "You told her, didn't you," she accused, rather than asked.

"No!" Setsuna protested. "She'd already figured it out somehow and wormed the confirmation out of me with her wily reporter tactics!"

"Did she show up in disguise?" Asuna asked, suspicious.

"Well, no," Setsuna admitted.

"So you'll admit that she didn't actually have to bring her A-game, then?"

"It's useless to dwell on the past!" Setsuna said, using another one of the conversational stratagems Mana had suggested to her. From the look on Asuna's face, she suspected this one wasn't working as well as the 'homicidal joke' had. "What matters is what we do now. She, she said that she wouldn't tell anyone else, and I  _think_  I persuaded her that we weren't really doing anything wrong, but -"

"How did you do that?" Asuna interrupted. Then, before Setsuna could really get down to the important business of hesitating and carefully choosing her words, she guessed. "Setsuna! Is  _that_  what you were doing while you were cutting class today?" she asked, stunned.

"... whimper," Setsuna whimpered, inwardly mourning the unfairness which allowed Asuna to use 'that' in a way which appeared to be beyond Setsuna herself.

Asuna gaped ... then startled laughing. "Oh, oh, wow, Setsuna, wow!" she managed to express coherently. Eventually, she stopped, drew a deep breath, and soberly mused, "Oh, what have we wrought? We have unwittingly unleashed a terrible threat to girls' chastity." And  _then_  she started laughing again.

"It isn't  _that_  funny!" Setsuna groaned.

"Oh, it is, it is," Asuna said, but she'd calmed down somewhat and only let out a few more chuckles as she regarded Setsuna. "Okay," she said. "So, Asakura says she isn't going to tell anyone, and you rocked her world. What's the problem, then?"

"The problem is, after that, she came  _here_ ," Setsuna explained, setting aside her bruised feelings for the moment. "I thought it was over, but she's clearly still taking an interest in the way things are developing."

"Well, that's what she does," Asuna said, shaking her head. "There's probably nothing to worry about, she won't be able to get near Negi with him probably having a long talk with Eva-chan."

"... but Evangeline-san said she wanted to have some privacy after her duel, and left you to your own devices," Setsuna observed.

"She did?" Asuna asked, surprised. "When'd that happen?"

"... while you were fixing the damage."

"Um ... I guess I wasn't really paying attention. But, I mean, the elder, and Rakan, and the creepy pervert and Takahata-sensei and that jerkass Goedel are probably talking to him, so ... he won't ... go off with her ... like he does ... whenever a girl asks him to do anything ..." Asuna slowed down as she considered her own words.

"We should find them?" Setsuna suggested.

"We should find them," Asuna agreed.

* * *

They walked together through the forest section of Evangeline's resort complex. It was an ancient, old growth forest, dense with yew trees that might have first flourished before the birth of Christ, along with oaks, ash, holly and hawthorn, all carefully transplanted from a Europe that no longer existed except in Evangeline's memories. Even in brightest daylight, it was dim beneath their boughs. In evening, as now, it called to mind stories of little girls dressed in red hoods and big bad wolves. Once upon a time, they hadn't just been stories, and the forest remembered that. Negi imagined that Evangeline liked to remember that too.

"So, what did you want to talk about?" he asked Asakura as she walked a little ahead of him, her arms crossed behind her back.

"Nothing in particular," she said, looking back at him with a cheerful grin. She apparently saw some sort of disbelief on his face in response to that, for her grin grew bigger. "What? Can't a girl have a nice little chat with a good friend of hers without an agenda?"

"I'm sure that a non-specific girl can," Negi agreed. "However, you're not a non-specific girl."

"True dat," she agreed. "Well, I suppose I do have one or two or just a few things I'd like to ask. Mostly to do with this." She gestured at his grown-up form.

"It should wear off in a few months, they say," Negi answered with a shrug. "So it won't really have any long-term impact on my life. I hope not, at least."

"Except for the part where you're an immortal -" She broke off, then clearly substituted for a certain word. "-  _person_ , which means that if you don't take those pills, you'll never get to be a grown-up for real. But taking them does this to you."

"We don't know that for sure," Negi said smoothly.

"And Evangeline-san isn't proof enough?"

"My case and hers are different in many ways. We don't know for sure," he repeated. "We won't know that for a few years."

She shook her head. "Okay. I don't know know if I like that foolish optimism of yours or not, but okay. What about in the short term?"

"In the short term ... I can't teach here while this is my situation," Negi admitted. "Well, obviously I  _can_ , but ... there's Ako-san to be considered. It would be cruel. And of course, there would be the difficulty of developing a cover story more resilient than 'I'm Negi's cousin Nagi' and ensuring that I keep to it and everyone else does. The complexity boggles the mind. So Fate is going to be teaching all of you for quite some time to come."

"That's the worst news I've ever gotten," Asakura announced.

"I believe that the class and he can eventually become friends," he said. "Eventually. With great effort on both sides."

"There's that foolish optimism again. What about your life beyond the school?"

"The project won't be affected, and -"

"What about  _your_  life?" she repeated and emphasized.

He looked away, then looked at her. "... you know, don't you?"

She blinked, genuinely surprised at him figuring it out, but covered it with a smile. "I have my sources, which a good reporter will never reveal -"

"Setsuna-san and, I'm guessing really, one of the employees from the suit store?"

"Take all the fun out of it, why don't you?" she asked, throwing her notebook over her shoulder. "Okay, down to brass tacks. What's going on, Negi-kun?"

"I'm honestly not sure how to explain it. The first time it happened, with Asuna, it just sort of ... happened. I think I made the first move, but ... I suppose that doesn't really matter."

"Actually, it sort of makes sense," Asakura mused aloud, leaning back against one of the trees. "You're a little more aggressive when you're in this grown up form. Hormones, I guess."

Negi didn't really pay any attention to that. "The other times, it was actually more their idea than mine, but ... I could have said no, and I didn't. I didn't want to say no. And it felt ... very, very good. Better than casting a new spell for the first time does - welllll." He hesitated. "Maybe not  _quite_  that good."

"And of course, we've always been dealing with a pretty messed-up libido, here," she murmured. Raising her voice, she continued. "They wanted it more than you did, though?"

"Well, Chisame did, but, well, with her - you know how she is."

"Yes, I guess that I do, at that. It's funny, actually. She and I are a lot alike, when you get right down to it?"

"Eh?" Negi said, blinking in surprise.

Asakura's eyes were distant, now. "We were both always on the outside, looking in ... not so much with envy, really, but more with an awareness that no matter how much I'd want to be, I couldn't be a part of the fun times everyone else was having. Because nobody trusted me. Because everyone would always think I had an agenda."

Quite abruptly, Negi's hands were on her shoulders, and he was facing her with a look of grief and shame that quite startled her. "Kazumi-san! I'm sorry! I didn't mean it that way!"

She blinked, then remembered, somewhat belatedly, how this whole conversation had gotten started. "It's, it's okay," she assured him.

"I do trust you!" he said. "I'd trust you with my life, if it came to that!"

 _Again with the not paying attention,_  she thought, but it was nearly drowned out by the roaring sound in her mind, the sensation of his face so close to her own, the scent of him flowing up his nostrils. Had he not bathed since the thing with Chisame? It wouldn't surprise her terribly.

 _Aw, hell with it,_  she decided at last.  _There was only one way this was ever going to end, wasn't there?_

She removed any separation between their faces, and pushed further. Fully conscious of the fact that he could easily have stopped her if he wanted, she took a certain pleasure in the way that she pushed him to the forest floor and crouched above him.

"K-Kazumi-san?" he said, once his lips were free. "You too? B-but I thought you -"

"Yeah, I know," she said, while her fingers fiddled with his belt buckle. "Or I mean I don't know. I loved what Setchi did, but does that mean I only go that way? Who knows? But what the hell, right? If nothing else, it'll make a hell of a story for my memoirs." The pants were undone, and pulled down enough to expose the monster, at which she smiled tenderly. "How my sexy tough teacher spoiled me for all other men," she speculated as she rubbed it, as she'd heard you were supposed to do.

"Eh? But I don't -"

"Well, I guess we're going to see," she said, letting go just long enough to pull her panties aside. And then she mounted him, and hissed at the mild pain. "Ohhhh, wowwww!" she half-cried, half-exulted, before reaching down to yank her top up and expose the fourth-largest breasts in the class to his wondering eyes.

And wondering tongue as well, for she promptly seized hold of his shoulders and pulled him up to hold his face against her. He obliged her by taking her nipple into his mouth as she rocked back and forth atop him, knees crushing into the fallen leaves covering the ground and the tips of her sneakers carving holes in the soil.

Asakura's fox-like eyes slammed shut as the sensations she was feeling shrieked up her spine to the pleasure centers of her brain. "Oh shit!" she cried to the heavens, or at least those parts of them vaguely visible through the tree coverage, not to mention the tiny slit through which her eyes were able to see. "Oh shit, you're so  _big_!"

"Language," Negi managed to get out as he moved from one of those full breasts to another.

That got her eyes open. " _Language?_ " she half-way laughed, half-way shrieked.

He shrugged in response, since he couldn't really talk at the moment.

"Bad, bad teacher!" she laughed as she pounded down even harder, thrilling at feeling so full. Well, it was only natural. Even though Negi's dick wasn't one of the foot-long, wrist-wide monstrosities so beloved by hentai artists and fanfiction authors who were either compensating for something or pandering to those who needed to do so, it was still wider than the hairbrush handle she'd shoved up herself once when she'd been  _very_  horny a couple of years ago. That had ended in blood and tears, and this was soooo much better.

"So great!" she vocalized those thoughts. "You are so great at this, Negi-kun!"

"'m not really doing that much," he opined.

"Who cares, if I say you're great then you're great! Why shouldn't you be great at this, just like you are at everything else! Oh, holy holy holy, I love this! I lugh ooo!" she cried, then blinked as she realized that his hand was over her mouth.

Negi actually blushed when she turned her startled gaze down towards him. "Sorry. Reflex." He clapped a hand over his own mouth. "Uh lugh oo tuh," he mumbled apologetically.

She shook her head and laughed some more, that happy, carefree sound that he really did love, he realized. Even if she wasn't his greatest passion, he truly did admire that spirit. And that smile of hers, sweet but just a little mischievous, made his own heart sing a little. Oh, no, wait, that wasn't his heart that was singing, it was something else, and he recognized the tune. "Uh, coming, coming," he told her.

Kazumi hesitated. The primal woman in her yearned to feel his release within herself, but it was drowned out by a  _slightly_  more sensible aspect of her own nature. With one last rock, she pulled back and off of him, seizing the meat stick and jerking it hard. Only a few strokes were needed to unleash his load onto her stomach and her panties.

"So naughty," she said, between gasps. "So naughty."

"Yes, I think so too," said a voice from behind her.

Asakura slowly turned to look in that direction, and flinched when she saw that the girl in the Peaceful Angel shirt didn't look all that peaceful at the moment. "Um ... how, how long have you been there?" she asked.

"Why did I know that would be your first question?" Asuna groused.

"Um, A-Asuna?" Negi stammered.

"For the record," she said as she reached down with both hands and began yanking her shirt up her sides, "I've been huh sus -" That spoken as the shirt came up over her mouth, momentarily obstructing her words. "- 'bad, bad teacher," she concluded, shirt dropping to the forest floor as her hands went behind her back to start working at the fastener of her bra.

"What. The heck. Are you doing?" Asakura slowly asked.

Asuna gave her the Look. Normally it would have been something of a relief to Negi to see someone else getting the Look, but the circumstances prevented that. "Bad, bad girl reporter!" Asuna said in faux-cheerful tone. "Doing all that to Negi and not having any orgasms yourself!" That spoken as she yanked up the sides of her skirt to expose her panties.

"What?" Asakura gasped. "I, I did! I had one as soon as he put it in, and a couple more afterwards, they just weren't, you know, terribly noisy or anything." The situation was so bizarre that she found nothing strange about turning to look down at Negi and ask, in a somewhat panicked tone, "You know I really liked that, right, Sensei?"

It said something rather unfortunate about Negi's lifestyle that this was not the strangest conversation he'd ever had. "Well, I think so," he said, hesitantly. Then, since Asuna was still giving the Look in their general direction even as she skinned down her panties, he felt obliged to add, "But I'm often wrong about these things."

Asakura's face didn't so much fall as collapse into an incredulous pout - which itself dissolved into a rather startled expression that was a surprisingly rare sight on her face, as she felt Asuna pressing against her back and the other girl's right hand wrapping around her left breast. "Indeed," Asuna stage-whispered right into her ear. "It's no good unless you get a lot of screaming orgasms. Fortunately, Negi here can go for  _hours_!"

"Hours?" Asakura squeaked. She'd noticed that his hard-on hadn't gone down, but attributed that to the fact that she was still holding it. And now, also Asuna's other hand, no, wait, both her hands were down there, but one of them was pressing up against her ohhhhhhh.

"So can I," Asuna added.

Asakura wasn't sure whether she should be terrified or really really turned on.

* * *

Elsewhere, the eternal child, Evangeline Athanasia Ekaterina McDowell, sat with one leg thrown up over the armrest of her golden throne, the words "Königin Dunkelheit" in ebony letters on its back just over her head, staring into a tiny glowing ball which hovered in mid-air.

"Well," she said. "Well, well, well. My pupils have apparently been pursuing some independent study. How ... nice. I will just have to do something about this. Yes. Yes, I will." And then she began to laugh.

It was not a pleasant sound to hear.

"Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha!"

See? Painful to even read, wouldn't you agree?

**To Be Continued**


	4. Evangeline, Kotaro/Chizuru

"Ah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!" laughed the tiny yet fierce queen of darkness, dressed in an exquisite black nightgown that managed to somehow conceal more than it revealed of her figure, as she stood before her enormous basalt throne. To either side of her thundered cataracts of blood, streaming from a pair of stony demonic faces on the wall above.

Before her quivered two helpless forms, bound less by the ropes that held them than by the glowing circles surrounding their limbs - both wrists, both ankles and neck - on which danced tiny mystic sigils. "Please master!" pleaded the boy magician. "We did not mean to arouse your terrible yet wholly justified anger!"

"If we must die to appease you," cried his beautiful warrior girl sidekick, "then let my death suffice! Spare him, I beg -"

"Oh, yes," shrieked the vampire queen, fangs and claws in full view. "You will beg, and then beg some more! Yet it will avail you naught!  _You stole my pudding!_  And now, now I not only  _must_  violate you both, I desire nothing less! And so it shall be done!"

"Saotome is truly a gifted artist, don't you think?" Evangeline asked casually as she sipped her cup of tea while watching Negi and Asuna staring at the large page she'd silently handed them a few minutes earlier, when they'd joined her on her castle's veranda that early morning. "The way that she makes the characters look  _just like us_ , while managing to add enough elements of caricature to make it impossible to challenge the cute little 'no resemblance to persons living or dead is intended' disclaimer on the side there ... truly magnificent, really. And did you note the rather clever homage to Go Nagai in the panel structure?"

"Um," said a rather pale Negi.

"Er," said an equally pale Asuna.

"Anyway, here's the next page, where the vampire queen actually gets down to the practical business of violating her errant disciples," Evangeline continued, holding up another large page and examining it admiringly. "I never realized how many ways there were to perform sodomy!"

"Master!" Negi shrieked, holding his face in his hands and trembling. "Please, please forgive us for stealing your pudding!"

Asuna broke off her intended amplification of his plea to give him an annoyed look. "Negi, we didn't steal anyone's pudding. She's not mad at us for that."

"Why, whatever gives you the impression that I'm mad, Kagurazaka Asuna?" Evangeline asked, grinning broadly. "Why would I be sharing this exquisite artwork that I commissioned at great expense from our classmate with people with whom I was angry?"

"You're mad because we had sex with Asakura in your resort without your permission," Asuna growled. "Also probably because we haven't actually told you about the sex that Negi's been having, instead letting Chachamaru do it."

"Hm," said Evangeline, tapping her chin with a teaspoon. "I suppose that would make me just a bit upset."

"Are you sure? I seem to remember eating some very good pudding a little while ago, and -" Negi started to ask.

The teaspoon was abruptly stuck in the top of the table in front of him, standing upright and quivering as though it had been thrown with great force.

Negi wisely shut up.

"Actually," said Evangeline, acting as though that strange diversion hadn't just happened, "I suppose that I am just a teeny bit angry that, when my own precious disciple - on whom I have placed all my hopes for the future -"

"Okay, you're laying it on a little thick now," Asuna informed her dryly.

Evangeline ignored her "- my dear, sweet, important disciple, on learning that he was suffering from a unique malady, did not turn to me, his gentle and wise master -"

"Did I say a little thick? Try incredibly thick."

Evangeline ignored her some more. "- but rather went to Eishun's wife for help."

"Well," said Negi, "I have to admit that I was worried that you wouldn't be able to help me, Master, because you'd be too busy laughing at my predicament."

Evangeline held her hand up to her chest, a look of shock on her face. "What would give you the idea that I would laugh at your situation?"

"Well, it was just a hunch, really, but then when I asked Chachamaru what your reaction was to finding out, she told me that you'd laughed at my predicament."

Sniff! went Evangeline as she looked to one side. "Stuff and nonsense. I never did."

"Hey, Chachamaru," Asuna called out.

"Yes, Asuna-san?" the gynoid answered as she looked through the doorway to the veranda.

"Could you remind us what you said Evangeline's reaction to finding out about Negi was?"

Chachamaru paused, looking from Asuna's face to the rather annoyed expression on Evangeline's face. "Um," she said. "I would actually prefer not to do so."

"Boy, Negi, I don't think very much of your choice of personal assistants," Asuna said, very calmly. "I mean, being unable to provide such critical information like that? Not very personal assistant-y, if you ask me."

"I don't think the boya did ask you, actually," Evangeline growled.

"Oh, I feel so very torn," Chachamaru moaned, looking down at the floor.

"That's enough," Negi said firmly. "Chachamaru, I won't need that information after all, thank you. Please consider yourself as having discharged your duties to me this evening and have a pleasant night." He smiled at her.

She smiled back. "Thank you, sensei," Chachamaru said softly before backing out of sight.

However, now Asuna and Evangeline were  _both_  glaring at him.

"Casanova," Asuna accused.

"What? No! I just don't want her feelings getting hurt!" he protested.

"Total Casanova," Evangeline agreed. "On the whole, I think I'm going to have to forgive you, Kagurazaka, but  _him_  -"

"Yeah, go nuts," said Asuna, shaking her head.

"I think I like the comic version of you better than the real one!" Negi protested.

* * *

Meanwhile ...

The sun was just starting to set on Mahora when Inugami Kotaro made his way up the stairs to the dorm room that he - for the moment - shared with either three girls or possibly one girl, one crazy old lady and one unfathomable and terrifying entity whom he did not wish to contemplate. That was why he paused every few moments and looked around, to make sure that said terrifying entity was nowhere nearby and would not be able to see him slipping into the room, gathering up his few belongings, and then heading out again, towards the teachers residences. Seruhiko-sensei, while a bit mystified by the urgency of his request, had agreed to put him up for a few days until he could make other arrangements.

He would miss them. All of them. Yes, even crazy old lady Iinchou-sama. But he was not Negi, and he did not want to get involved in whatever screwiness had clearly transferred from Negi to him now that the guy was a teenager and he was the most eligible prepubescent male on campus. So he was going to go hide for a while until things got back to normal, whatever normal was.

It was a good plan. No, a great plan. It was the sort of plan Negi would have come up with, he was sure. But it would come to naught if Chizuru spotted him coming and intercepted him, which she would easily do despite his advantages of speed, strength and pretty much everything else that should prevent her from doing so. Because she was, heaven help him, his Alpha.

So he moved carefully and silently, to avoid falling prey to the greatest hunter he'd ever met. At last, he stood before the door, and listened carefully to make sure that the room was empty at the moment. There were no sounds inside, and so he felt confident enough to quietly open the door and slip in to the dark hallway beyond.  _So far, so good,_  he thought as he slid up to the dining area.

"Hello, Kotaro-kun," said Chizuru, sitting on the couch and facing away from him as he arrived.

 _Of course,_  was the first conscious that emerged from the chaos of his thoughts a few moments later.  _The greatest hunters always wait for the prey to come to them._  "Um. 'Sup?" he asked aloud.

"Come here, please," Chizuru said, silently indicating the couch cushion she wasn't occupying.

"Uh, I was really just gonna stop in and grab some -"

"Come. Here. Please."

He was seated beside her in under a second. She was wearing her long, dark housecoat as she sat there, and he was a little surprised that, after he sat down, she didn't turn to look at him or continue speaking for several moments.

"Kotaro-kun," she said at last. "Are you afraid of me?"

His eyes bulged. This, this was not a question he had ever thought to be asked. And, worse, it was one he really didn't want to answer honestly. So he hesitated, opened his mouth to make several false starts, and finally settled on a faint whine.

"I'll take that as a yes," Chizuru murmured.

"Only sort of!" Kotaro protested, then shrank down when she finally turned to look at him inquiringly. "Only ... sort of," he repeated, more quietly.

"I see," she said. "Kotaro-kun. Would you believe me if I said that's not really what I want?"

He blinked.

"I ... wanted you to respect me," she said, with the air of one explaining things that she wasn't fully sure that she understood herself. "I thought it was important for you to have ... a figure in your life who could be ... an authority, of sorts, that you'd have to respect. I think that's important. I respect my parents, but ... well, you don't have any parents to respect, and so ... I tried to be a maternal figure, and ... I think I must have failed somewhere, because, well, only brutes confuse fear and respect, and you, of course, are not a brute, but, somehow, I taught you to fear me. Which was, as I said, not really what I wanted."

"I, I respect you," he insisted. "I respect the hell out of you."

"... I'm not sure what that means, but, thank you, I'll take it as a compliment." She took a deep breath. "Kotaro-kun ... do you love me?"

"Yes," Kotaro answered immediately.

Chizuru blinked again, and, after a moment, her usual faint smile settled on her lips for the first time in this conversation. "So prompt," she said. "So forthright."

He was conscious that he was flushing, but chose to ignore it. "Y'gave me a home when you didn't have to, and after all the crap that happened when we met," he said, roughly. "Why wouldn't I love you? But, y'see, that's why I gotta leave, because -"

"Kota-kun. Hush."

He fell silent at once.

"I am ... happy that you care about me so much," Chizuru said after another momet of contemplation. "But I'm not happy - no, I'm very  _un_ happy - that you'd choose to leave m-  _us_  without a word of explanation or farewell. That's, that is an awful thing to do to someone that you care about. That you ..." And then she fell silent, looking down at her hands as they rested on her lap.

"Chizu-ne?" he asked, when she hadn't spoken for a while.

"Do you know why I love the children in the kindergarten class so much, Kotaro-kun?" she asked abruptly.

"They do what you tell them?" he ventured a guess.

"They have learned to do so, yes, but that's not the reason. I love them because their whole lives are just beginning, with so much to look forward to, so much freedom, so much ..." She trailed off again, then shook her head. "My whole life has already been decided for me. Who I'm going to marry, how many children we'll have, where we'll live. The life that I choose will end once I graduate from high school and then ..." She became aware that Kotaro was staring at her in silent horror, and turned to face him with a sad little smile. "It's not so bad," she said.

"It's not so bad?" he mouthed silently.

She shrugged. "My freedom could be ending right now. My grandmother didn't even have this much. And things ... change. Anyway. That's why I don't want you to leave, Kota-kun. Not just because it would make Natsumi-chan very very very unhappy, but because I want the people that I care about to be close to me for as long as I can be close to them. Very selfish, I know, but that's what I want."

Kotaro swallowed. "But ... things  _are_  changing?"

"I know. Are you afraid of the changes?"

He bristled. "I'm not afraid of anything!"

"Poor word choice on my part," she said, not smiling. "Are you ... concerned that the changes might make other people uncomfortable?"

Now he just nodded, looking away.

"Specifically, Natsumi-chan?"

Another nod.

"I see. Well. I suppose we'll just have to do something to make sure that doesn't happen."

"Huh?" Kotaro asked. "What do you mean by that?"

Chizuru took a deep breath. "What I mean is that we're going to have to do something so that the changes that you are going through don't embarrass or upset Natsumi-chan," she explained as she stood up. "Instead, those changes will be hardly noticeable to the poor girl, because you have a better handle on them. I'm certain that you can do this, Kotaro-kun. You are a young man of ability and discipline, and I believe in you."

"Okay," he said, gazing at her. "But, well, what exactly are we going to do?"

"Well," she said, as she undid the belt of her housecoat, "the first step should be to address your most immediate difficulty, your disturbance when dealing with the female form. To that end, we are going to familiarize you with it to a greater degree than you already have." With a shrug of her shoulders, she sent it falling to the floor.

Beneath, she was wearing nothing more than a pair of panties.

"Now, you see, Kotaro-kun -" she began, then broke off and glared at him. "Really, Kotaro-kun," she said sharply. "I suppose that this might be immensely flattering under other circumstances, but you of all people should know how hard it is to get blood stains off the fabric of furniture and clothing. Stop that immediately! Kotaro-kun? Oh dear. This might be harder than I thought. Band-aids, where did I put the band-aids ..."

* * *

"There's just one thing I don't understand," said Asuna, looking around her surroundings somewhat curiously.

"Be honest. There's more than that," Evangeline sneered.

"Well, yeah, I suppose if you wanted to be all pedantic and stuff, there's lots of things that I don't understand, even if I'm not quite so dumb as some people like to think," Asuna said just a bit sharply.

"Her test scores have improved quite a bit since we returned," Negi said supportively.

"So now she's just barely failing instead of failing by a whole lot?" Evangeline asked him.

"Well, yes," he admitted.

"Oh, thanks a lot, Negi!" Asuna growled. "Just for that, I'm not going to ask her to untie you."

"Considering you didn't say anything while she was tying me up in the first place, I'm not sure that's all that harsh of a loss," Negi said with remarkable sang-froid for someone whose feet and hands were each tied to the posts of Evangeline's four poster bed.

"We'll never know, now, will we?" Asuna asked. "Anyway, this thing that I don't understand - why do you even  _have_  a bedroom? You don't need to sleep, and if you want to lounge about you've got all sorts of couches and stuff all over the place. So why a separate bedroom?"

"Because someone's home should have a bedroom," Evangeline said, in a tone which suggested that this was a very silly question which she was offended to have been asked. "That was a very silly question which I am offended to have been asked," she added, making the implication clear.

As Asuna rolled her eyes, Evangeline returned her gaze to Negi, smiling her predatory smile at him. "Now that we've resolved that issue -"

"Who says we resolved it?" Asuna complained.

Evangeline resumed ignoring her. "- let us move on to more pressing matters. Like you pressing various parts of your anatomy into contact with parts of mine!"

"Geh, what a strained segue," Asuna moaned. "This must be how Chisame feels all the time. No wonder she hardly ever smiles."

"She's very beautiful when she does, though," Negi opined.

"Stop not ignoring her," Eva growled. And without further ado, she sembled into her adult form, the glamorous, leggy, busty form with which she had nearly, shut up,  _nearly_  seduced even the Thousand Master. "And pay attention to me," she purred, looming over Negi's bound form.

"You're very beautiful too, Master," Negi told her, smiling up at her.

Evangeline froze in position over him before she could swoop down. "Beautiful?" she repeated.

"Yes, you're very -"

"Beau-ti-ful _?_ " she screeched. She abruptly sembled back into her actual form and turned her back on him, shaking and muttering too quietly for either of them to make out, keen senses or no keen senses.

Negi, genuinely bewildered by this turn of events, looked over at Asuna with a helpless look on his face, silently communicating a request for help. Asuna mimed similar bewilderment, exaggerated bewilderment even, along with the notion that she was an idiot, after all. Negi gave her an exaggerated pleading look. Shaking her head in annoyance, Asuna gestured towards Evangeline herself.

"Quit engaging in non-verbal communication like that," Evangeline snapped without looking at either of them. "It's creepy!"

"Ahem," Negi coughed. "Master, I sense that I have unwittingly offended."

"You called me beautiful!" Evangeline replied angrily. "The last time I came at you like that, you were freaking out!"

"Well, yes, but that was ... a while ago, and various things have happened in the interim. And while you are very, very beautiful like that, well, I mean, Princess Theodora  _also_  surprised me with a kiss at one point, just like you did, and she's also a grown up, and so while what you did back then was very startling, it's something that I've sort of had the chance to get used to, particularly thanks to Asuna, and Konoka, and Setsuna-san, and Kazumi, and -"

"How come Setsuna still rates a -san?" Asuna asked. Then she frowned. "Hey wait, back up, what's this about Evangeline surprising you with a kiss?"

"How can that possibly be your takeaway?" Evangeline groaned. Abruptly, she smiled. "Oh ho. So you never told her about our little tete-a-tete in the baths, then," she almost cooed to Negi.

"Well, no, there wasn't really time under the circumstances, and -" Negi started to explain.

"What tete-a-tete?" Asuna asked, getting angry, and, in the process, getting to her feet.

"Ah hah!" Evangeline laughed, grinning broadly. "Now, at last, the claws come out. Now, you know the truth, and it fills you with rage! Yes, Kagarazuka Asuna, it was I who gave your precious Negi his first non-pactio kiss!"

Asuna, frowning, began walking over to her.

"Let that jealousy at last consume -" Evangeline ranted, only to be cut off when Asuna reached her, and, somewhat unexpectedly, hugged the smaller girl against her own lingerie-clad form.

"Don't be a dumbass, Eva-chan," Asuna said wearily. "Like I told you after you put me through hell, I don't hate you, and if I didn't hate you after that, I never will. So just stop it with the trying to make me hate you, okay?"

"Argh," Evangeline muttered in muffled fury.

"Why do you want me to get angry at you, anyway?" Asuna asked, not giving Evangeline any opportunity to wiggle out of her embrace. "I mean, yeah, there's the whole 'they're all going to leave me anyway' thing, but that doesn't apply to you and me, right? I'm going to be leaving a lot sooner, but I'm counting on you to be there when I wake up and -"

"I already told you, don't go looking for a visit from me, I'm going to have better things to do, and anyways -"

"But I bet you're going to find an excuse to come around all the same," Asuna interjected cheerfully.

"You have no reason to believe that!" Eva hissed. " _And anyways_ , like I told you,  _you're_  not going to wake up, it'll just be someone with your face and none of your memories. Why would I bother -"

"I am going to be the one who wakes up," Asuna said, no longer cheerful but very firm nonetheless. "And if I don't ... then I'm counting on you to come around and teach that girl what it was like to be me."

"You have no reason to believe that!" Evangeline cried, finally trying to push Asuna away. "Any of that!"

Asuna gripped her all the more tightly. "If I had a reason to believe it, it wouldn't be faith, Eva-chan. But I do believe it. You may not believe in me, but I believe in you." She quirked her lips up in a smile. "Doesn't that just drive you  _nuts_?"

"You are, without a doubt, the second most annoying person I have ever met!" Evangeline declared.

"Considering who number one is, I'm inclined to take that as a compliment," said Asuna. And then, as was often the case, she acted without really thinking it through, and swooped down to press her lips to Evangeline's. The little vampire's eyes went wide.

"What?" Evangeline asked when she pulled back from the kiss. "What are you doing?"

"Let's show another one of our favorite idiots a good time," Asuna murmured in reply, her smile going distinctly naughty.

"You have got to be out of your -"

"Does this mean that I'm going to be untied, now?" Negi interjected hopefully.

"Nope," Asuna replied without a backward glance as she started rubbing Evangline's bare hip, right below the string of her panties. "Not for the first part, anyway. You get to lie there and watch. Won't that be fun?"

"... oh, now that's just not fair," Negi protested feebly.

"Call it payback for me only finding out about Chisame from Setsuna," Asuna replied, sliding a finger under the strap. "Well, Eva-chan?" she asked.

"Well," Evangeline said, eventually. "It occurs to me that I may, only may, have been stinting on training you to be a future mid-level boss of evil, and that this sort of thing might, only might, be a good first step. So ... well ... I guess ..."

"Great, glad you think so," Asuna said, then promptly picked Evangeline up and dashed over to the couch where she'd been sitting earlier, laying Eva down on top of it before diving down between the other girl's spread thighs.

"Holy shit, when did you get so good at this!" Evangeline shrieked a moment later.

"I learn well," Asuna said humbly, between licks at her cooch.

* * *

When Kotaro regained consciousness, he found himself in the furo, comfortably surrounded by warm water. For a few blissful moments, he could believe that what had been going on before had just been a horrible, horrible ... okay, not  _so_  horrible, but certainly very disconcerting dream that he'd been having. That was entirely plausible, the first time that ... problem ... had ever shown itself had been when he'd been taking a bath in his grown up form and he'd found himself thinking about how Natsumi had been acting after their pactio and ... well, it had been very confusing and he was glad it was over.

"Awake, I see," said a quiet, lovely voice directly into his ear, and in that moment any notion of it having been a dream died as he realized that the sensations of warmth behind him had other sensations associated with it as well. Like firmness, in two specific spots on his back, surrounded by softness.

He swallowed. "Chizu-ne?" he asked.

"No, it's Fukanokami no Bensaiten. Yes of course it's me! Who else would be in the bath with you?"

This did not seem to be the time to list off the various girls who'd sometimes given him the vibe of being interested in his grown-up form, so all he said was, "Um."

A sigh drifted past his ear. "Have we calmed down now?"

Kotaro considered. "Well," he said eventually, "we were kind of calm for a few seconds there, but not so much anymore."

"Yes, I can see that," the voice in his ear said.

 _Urk,_  he thought. So could he, now. Just the tip of it was poking above the surface of the bathwater, but he knew that it was not unlike an iceberg.  _Go down, go down!_  he thought furiously, but to no avail. It was so frustrating! Maybe he really should have sought further instruction in the internal disciplines before he tried to master the external ones, except that would've gotten in the way of kicking ass, and -

"So, returning to my original subject, we have to get you more accustomed to the effects that female bodies can have on you," Chizuru's voice continued, patiently. "Because, since you live with three girls who are blossoming into womanhood, if you aren't accustomed to those effects, you will embarrass yourself and hurt the feelings of those who care about you, and these are both things we would all wish to avoid. With me so far?"

"Um, yeah, but, you know, I really don't think -"

"That is indeed one of your other problems," Chizuru interjected. "It is an appealing aspect of your character, admittedly, the way you don't think, but it can also cause problems. But we are not now addressing this tendency. We will get to that later, perhaps."

"We will?"

"Yes, we will. For now, though, we are going to deal with the problem at hand. Speaking of which -" And then her hand rose up out of the water from beside his hip, and reached out to wrap around the hard member between his legs. Kotaro gasped at the sensation, at the feeling of how much strength was present in her grip and yet also so much control. There was no pain. Virtually every time there had been contact between his flesh and that of another, there had been some pain, even in friendly blows given in training. But in this, there was only firm and easy pressure.

And then she began to rub. Slowly at first, then more rapidly as she took his measure. In just a few moments, any moisture had fled his mouth, and he was gasping for breath like he'd just fought for hours. "Nnn, Chizu-ne," he said.

"Let me know when you're going to release," she said, sounding strangely distant despite how close her mouth must be to his ear.

"I don't, I don't know if I ca-can."

"Of course you can. You are your own master, aren't you?"

He'd thought so. He'd always told himself this. But in truth, the impossibly beautiful creature, so lovely as to be terrifying (or was it the other way around) was so totally in control of him right now ... but on the other hand, that meant he had to do what she told him to do, right? And so -

"It's coming," he gasped at last. "It's, it's  _coming_!"

And her other hand came up, holding a wet wash cloth, and dropped it over him. The temperature change pushed him over the edge and he felt the pulsing sensation that he'd only experienced once before as he gasped and choked, twisting in her grip.

"Wasn't that good?" she asked, quietly.

"S-s-so good," he stammered. "Chizu-ne ... love you ..."

"I know," she said, kissing his ear. "I know."

She held him as he shuddered, keeping the cloth wrapped around his member and not letting it slide beneath the water's surface until she was certain that it had soaked up all of the emission. Once that was done, she slackened her grip and carefully set the cloth down on the edge of the tub, keeping one eye on it. "Okay," Chizuru said at last. "Now, if you should ever find yourself experiencing that sort of ... need ... in the future, just, well, let me know, and we'll take care of it like this."

"Uh-huh," the boy muttered dazedly as he sagged into the water as she released him. Perhaps the shock of losing contact with her body roused him, however, for as she stood up to exit the tub, he abruptly asked, "Wait, what about you?"

"What about me?" she replied with a slightly different emphasis, as she stood up, putting a towel in front of her breasts and water dripping from her bikini panties.

"Well, I mean, ain't this about both people feeling good?" he asked a bit anxiously, leaning his head back to look up at her.

"I do feel good," Chizuru told him without meeting his gaze as she started to step out of the furo. "I have helped someone dear to me to settle down, and so I feel very good about myself and -"

He forced himself to sit upright and turned to glare at her. "That's not what I meant and you know it."

She sighed. "Kotaro-kun, I'm sad to say that you aren't really able to make me feel good the way I just made you feel good. There are certain things you lack in ordere to do so."

"Like what?" he asked pugnaciously.

"Tits."

He boggled. "What?"

"I said, it's complicated."

He continued to boggle. "No you didn't."

"Kotaro -"

"So, what, you're like Setsuna-san?" he pressed, starting to recover from the boggling.

"I'm not as nearly driven by self-denial and self-loathing, but if you are asking whether the person for whom I have romantic yearnings is female ... then, yes, she is," Chizuru answered leaning back against the counter. She'd reconciled to the idea that she wasn't getting out of this conversation, but she was determined to maintain some limits nonetheless. "I don't intend to discuss that person's identity with you -"

"Iinchou, right?"

She pouted. "Take all the fun out of it, why don't you?" With a shake of her head, she continued. "In any event, while I'm willing to help you like this, that's all that it is going to be. All right?"

Kotaro drew in a deep breath and stood up in the tub, his erection - at at least half-mast, if not all the way there - bobbing before him. "Nuts," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"Excuse me," he replied with a slightly different emphasis. "I need some help with that,  _right now_."

Chizuru's eyebrows twitched. "I see. And I suppose you're not willing to sit back down in the tub so that we can do this the easy way."

"Nope," he said, shaking his head and sending tiny driplets of water flying everywhere.

"Ah well. It can't be helped," Chizuru said, and dropped the towel.

A moment or so later, Kotaro found himself seated on the toilet seat, gazing down at Chizuru as she knelt before him and massaged his unit between her breasts, and dazedly thinking that this hadn't been what he wanted at all. It felt wonderful, this sensation, but at the same moment, his conscious mind was objecting to the way that his Alpha appeared to be abasing herself before him. Yet he also knew that she could simply keep him seated there, which meant that she was in control of the situation as she should be. It was horribly confusing.

Chizuru was not completely unaware of his confusion, whatever he might think. On some level, she welcomed it. The boy should be at least as confused and uncertain as she had been during her first foray into the world of adult sexuality, two-and-a-half years before. But that was the spiteful part of her personality talking, which she tried to channel into harmless, or at least only mischievous pursuits. She loved the boy, and even if he'd somewhat angered her with his 'demands', she understood where they were coming from.

And truthfully, his attempts to carress the sides of her breasts as she masturbated him were not ... horrible. Clumsy, certainly, and inexperienced - but the caresses she'd received that time had been very experienced, and yet revolting in her memories, which were of course colored by what had come later. In Kotaro's rough touch, there was an honesty and sincerity which had been completely absent then. And so she smiled up at him, and pressed her lips to one of his nipples, to watch him shudder ...

To her surprise, though, he recovered quickly, and bent his neck enough to kiss her own forehead. What little hardness had been in her heart melted at that gesture. It was almost tempting to give him another kiss, somewhere else - but his penis was, despite its engorgement, still too small for her to reach, down between her breasts. She would have to let go ...

 _No,_  she thought.  _That is going too far._

A silent inward sigh.  _Who am I kidding?_  she asked herself.  _This whole thing is going too far._

She pulled back, watched (as though in slow motion) Kotaro's mouth open to begin a protest, and then felt him stilled as she bent down to press her lips to the tip of his erection. And then, almost immediately, she bent down further to take it into her mouth, wrapping her tongue around it, because the truth was that there was no too far, that her limits were of her own making and she broke them at her whim. Also because it was fun to hear Kotaro swearing and gasping and making what would have been the fervent invocation of deity in a more religious milieu.

 _He should be releasing shortly,_  she thought as she bobbed up and down.  _After all, he is so young, and ... wait, no, he already released once, so it will take longer a second time, that's how it works, right? Or does the one cancel out the other? Oh, no, what am I doing, I don't know what I'm doing, this is not the way my desires incline and yet -_

To her shock, she felt him pushing her away, pushing on her shoulders so that she rolled back onto the floor and stared up at his wide eyes that looked wilder than he'd looked on the night when they first met as he crouched above her.

"May I?" he asked, tongue lolling from his mouth.

"Kotaro-kun -" she said.

"May I?" he asked again, sounding ever more desperate.

"Natsumi-chan, if you happen to be hovering about invisibly, now would be the ideal time to reveal yourself and express your displeasure," Chizuru announced. "I will even let you slap me. Once," she added quickly.

He didn't seem to have heard her, and no displeasure looked to be expressed. "May I?" he asked again, genuine pain in his voice.

Ah well.  _This is too far,_  she thought, and nonetheless answered, "Yes."

She adjusted her legs, shifting them out of the rather uncomfortable semi-kneeling position they'd been in as Kotaro moved onto her. She thought she'd have to tell him how to go about the next step, and was surprised when he managed to fit his member into her cleft without her advice.

"I'm inside you," he said after a moment.

She refrained from saying 'duh' with considerable effort. "Yes, you are," she agreed. "Do you know what comes now?"

He nodded, cleared his throat, and stammered, "I th-think so, at least." He began rocking back and forth, pulling back and then pushing forward again. His motions were jerky and inexpert, but, again, sincere. As was the way that he stretched up to take one of her nipples in his mouth as he plugged away on her. She sighed again, in genuine pleasure if not particularly ecstatic transport.

Her knees came up to cradle his hips as he began to move faster and faster atop her. His breath was coming in rapid-fire gasps now. "So good," he managed to say in one such gasp. "Feels so good inside you."

"Natsumi-chan will feel even better," she told him softly. "But you must be more gentle - ah!" She broke off as, unexpectedly, she felt her own release. More than unexpectedly; she hadn't ever had an orgasm from penetration before.

His eyes went wide - from what she'd said, no doubt. He couldn't be perceptive enough to realize what had just happened, could he? "I - I - I - naaaaaggggh!" he howled as he climaxed and spilled his seed into her.

For an eyeblink, all was silent in the bathroom.

Then there was a knock on the door. "Kotaro-kun?" asked Natsumi's anxious voice. "Is that you in there? I heard a scream - what's going on?"

They stared at each other in mute panic, before he lifted his head to stare at the door. "Sorry!" he shouted. "Shower water was a little too hot, is all!"

"Be more careful!" her voice admonished, and there was the sound of footsteps moving away.

"... I can't believe that worked," he whispered.

"Mm. Yes. Lying to one's loved ones. Is there anything it  _can't_  do?" Chizuru murmured dryly.

"I - I mean -"

"Yes, yes, I know. Um. Now, in regards to what I said earlier about coming to me for help if you ever had a problem like that again -"

"We'll do this more next time?" he asked hopefuly.

"No," she said firmly. "I was actually about to say, 'stuff it'. No next time. You have what you need, use it. Now get off me, please, I need to clean up."

* * *

This was awful. Just awful. At least when he'd been dying, interesting people had shown up to orate at him about other possibilities. Now, though? Now all he could do was lie there and watch helplessly while Asuna and their master worked out their vicious lusts on each other. Not only was he becoming aroused with no way to relieve that arousal, the back of his neck was starting to itch  _terribly_ , and he could not relieve  _that_  either!

Their master was truly a genius at the subtle art of imprisoning invulnerable foes.

Their master was presently sixty-nining with Asuna, in a surprising turn towards mutuality in their activity thus far. At the start, Asuna had dived between Evangeline's legs to perform cunnilingus on her person, and all that the little vampire had done in response had been to shriek, wrap her stocking-clad legs around Asuna's neck, and urge her onward with further cries of "Yes, like that, like that!" and occasional tugs on Asuna's hair.

Eventually, though, after what he judged to be Evangeline's third orgasm or thereabouts, Asuna had crawled up Evangeline's body to share the flavors she'd just consumed with her, which had led to deep kissing and the rending of Asuna's lacy bustier as Evangeline fought to gain access to her second disciple's breasts.

"No fanging!" Asuna had cried out as Evangeline bent down to suckle.

"I'll fang you if I fanging want to fang you!" Evangeline had somewhat confusingly retorted, but apparently she didn't want to, as any gasps that Asuna made had nothing to do with even momentary pain.

Meanwhile, Negi had lain there and watched.

After a little while of that, the sensations brought on by the occasional rubbing of their respective pubic areas against other portions of each other's anatomy had kindled a suspicion in both of their minds, and to resolve that suspicion, they scissored their legs against each other. From the gasps and near-shrieks of ecstatic bliss which resulted, it had seemed to both of them that the suspicion had been proven. Of course, they weren't actually thinking such things at the time, or much of anything, really, except for 'wowwowwowwowwowowow!'

At one point, as though trying to obtain more leverage for a more vigorous tribadism, Evangeline had once again summoned up her adult form, only to lose it in seconds as her emotions once more got the best of her. In what might have been a demonstration of her stubbornness, or perhaps her lack of understanding of the definition of insanity, Eva had sembled into adulthood again and promptly lost it again. And a third time.

At this point, Asuna had broken down in laughter, which, somewhat ironically, had pushed Evangeline's temper over the emotional stumbling block which kept her from maintaining her adult form. Consequently, she seized control of their movement against one another (helped, one must admit, by the distraction Asuna's laughter caused for herself) and proceeded to grind Asuna to the verge of madness.

Meanwhile, Negi had lain there and watched.

Eventually, once more restored to her juvenile form, they had settled into a, yes, sexually-charged sixty-nine, don't you just love that phrase, I know that some people can't live without it, and this was more or less where we came in. After yet another orgasm achieved without the help of any man, the two girls collapsed on each other, breathing heavily. Owing to their posture, Asuna was the first to see Negi's frustrated - in many senses of the word - expression. Owing to the endorphins flowing in her brain, her reaction to that sight was to giggle.

"Oh dear," she cooed. "Look how upset Negi- _kun_  is!"

"Now, really -" Negi started to say.

"Oh, my, he really is!" agreed Evangeline, lifting her head from Asuna's crotch and turning to look with a malicious grin. "Negi- _kun_  looks so unhappy right now!"

"Okay, enough with the -"

By the time she'd rotated herself off of Asuna's semi-nude form, Evangeline had - you guessed it - shifted into adult mode once again. "I think we should do something nice for Negi- _kun_ , don't you?"

"The emphasis on that honorific is really starting to upset me," Negi announced. "Also, my neck itches. I just want to get that off my chest."

"Oh, well, then," Evangeline said as she pranced over to him, returning to the crouched posture she'd had earlier. "Well, boya? Are you ready to walk the path your father did not walk? The Grey Path?"

Negi blinked, and took a long look at the hairless vagina hovering over his engorged member. "It's more pinkish than anything - wait, didn't you already ask -"

"I'll take that as a yes!" Eva hissed, and fucked him.

"Ahhh!" she cried out in obvious pleasure as she began to rock up and down atop him.

"Gah!" Negi gasped, stunned by her enthusiasm. "Master, I thought you'd be -"

"What?" she sneered grinningly as she bent over him. "Sweet? Gentle?  _Kind_? Are those the words you thought described me, boya?" she asked, emphasizing each word with a thrust of her hips.

"Well, no," he replied. "But, you know, I thought, since your hymen would grow back -"

"What?" she shrieked, pausing in her motions. "What kind of ridiculous, ephebophile nonsense have you been swallowing? That isn't even how such things work for - never mind that now! Just hurry up and fuck me back, idiot!"

"Aw, what's your hurry, Eva-chan?" Asuna asked coyly as she sauntered over to the bed, coming up to Negi's shoulders. "If you've been watching us, you should know that Negi -"

"- can go for hours, yes, yes, I  _was_  watching!" Eva growled. "Notwithstanding that, I am, in addition to being un-sweeet, un-gentle, and un-kind -"

"Oh, you're not, really, just sort of -" Negi started to reassure her.

She ripped what was left of Asuna's bustier from the girl's body and shoved it into his mouth. "In addition to being the opposite of all those things," Eva continued as though she hadn't been interrupted, "I am also impulsive and lazy! And this, however enjoyable it might be, is nonetheless work! So I want it to be over soon so I can go back to lying around and doing nothing! So hurry up and fuck me!"

"That's a really negative self-image you've got there," Asuna commented mildly as she reached down to pull the lacy fabric out of Negi's mouth.

"Yes, and since you are actually a wonderf- oh hell," Negi broke off as he saw Asuna straddle his face and bring her vulva down to his lips.

"So what it if it is?" Evangeline snapped as, frustrated, she resumed her hip motions.

"So d'ja ever stop and think that maybe people who like you don't like it when you're down on yourself?" Asuna asked as she mirrored those motions, enjoying the sensations of Negi licking her. He was soooo well-trained by now.

"I don't care if you -"

"'For men may love you at their pleasure but be made to fear you at yours,'" Asuna sighed.

"Do  _not_  quote Macchiavelli at me while we're having three way sex, dammit, I - aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHH!" she shrieked as her orgasm was finallly triggered and she collapsed forward against Asuna's breasts.

"But you see," said Asuna, quietly, wrapping her arms around Eva as she slumped into her smaller form, "we do love you, and we're not gonna stop. Are we, Negi?"

"Uhm fuhnduhn uht huhd tuh bruhthe."

* * *

Later ...  _much_  later, because, yes, Negi  _could_  go for hours, and so could Asuna and Eva ... the three of them were lying beneath the four-poster's four collapsed posts.

"In my defense," Negi said eventually, "I didn't realize that even if I couldn't break the ropes tying me down, I might be able to damage what they were tied to and free myself that way."

"In my defense," Asuna said, after a moment, "I really did think that Eva had probably enchanted the posts so that they could take that, when I started that tag-team blowjob competition."

"In my defense," Evangeline said, in prompt response, "I - wait a minute, it's my bloody house and I don't have to justify a damn thing."

"... she has a point," Negi murmured to Asuna.

"Brown-noser."

"Let me ... just ... shift a little bit ... and - ah," Evangeline sighed, pushing one of the posts up and off the three of them. Since all four were still attached to the canopy, that dragged the other three off of them as well. They sat up with a sigh, some grunts, and a certain amount of dusting themselves and each other off.

"Thanks," Asuna said with a sweet smile once Negi got a particularly obstreperous chunk of plaster off her forehead.

"It disgusts me to watch you two being so lovey-dovey," Evangeline announced.

"... this is some new definition of lovey-dovey with which I'm not familiar," Negi replied.

"What happened to the brown-nosing?" the little vampire pouted.

"I just can't satisfy anybody today," he sighed.

"Oh, yes you can," Asuna and Eva assured him with matching evil grins.

"In fact," continued Asuna, "I think you satisfy us so much that, in the of classroom solidarity and that of being a mid-level boss of evil -"

"Future," Eva interjected, smile banished for a suspicious look. " _Future_  mid-level boss of evil."

"Yes-yes-yes," Asuna replied dismissively. "In those spirits, I think we ought to share your talents with the rest of the class, both because all the girls will really enjoy it and because it will be wicked fun to corrupt the entire class under the eyes of the administration and, in particular, Fate." She beamed malevolently. Well, that was what she was going for, at least.

Evangeline stared. "You want the boya to have sex with all the girls in the class?"

Asuna nodded proudly.

Evangeline looked away. Sniffling noises may have been made.

"Are you -"

"I am not crying tears of pride as your mentor of evil!" she proclaimed without looking back.

"Right," said Asuna, then glanced up at Negi, who had a very bland look on his face. "I was expecting you to chime in with 'don't I get a say in this' by now," she told him.

"We all know what the answer would be, don't we?" he asked rhetorically. With a sigh, he continued. "So which of the girls am I supposed to debauch next in my course of depravity?"

Ignoring the tone, Asuna hemmed. "Welllll ... there's a certain pair of girls who've been waiting quite a while for a little bit of your action and satisfaction."

"... you mean Nodoka-san and Yue-san?" Negi guessed.

"What? God, no. Those sweet young things? No, no no no. You're going to need a lot more practice before you can deal with them."

"By which point they will no longer be sweet or young?"

She ignored that too. "I'm talking about Kaede-chan and Mana, of course."

"Oh, of course." Beat. "Asuna, I hate to ask this, but are you hoping that my services as a gigolo will make Captain Tatsumiya reduce the amount of money you owe her?"

"... I am shocked ...  _shocked_  ... that you would ask that."

"Riiiiight."

* * *

"You ought to confess, you know," said Nodoka out of nowhere.

Well, okay, Yue had to admit that it wasn't  _that_  surprising. In the few days since the conversation on the hillside, as she now thought of it, the subject had actually come up quite frequently. Not constantly, but frequently enough to keep her constantly reminded of the subject.

As though she needed to be. As though she'd forget it.  _You get amnesia **once**  and they never let you live it down,_ Yue thought with a sigh as she set down her current stack of books to be reshelved and turned to face her dearest friend in all the word. "Okay, Nodoka -"

"You're finally agreeing with me!" Nodoka said, setting down her own stack just as carefully as Yue had.

"No," Yue said succinctly. "Nodoka, let's talk about this, shall we?"

"I'd rather get on with the doing it stage, but if you insist -"

Yue decided to let that slide. "Set aside for the moment all the still perfectly valid arguments  _against_  confessing to Negi-sensei that I gave you when we went to the beach back before, well, everything."

"I like the notion of setting silly arguments aside," Nodoka said, nodding vigorously.

Yue decided to let  _that_  slide, too. "Has it occurred to you that me confessing to Negi-sensei could possibly really hurt his feelings under these circumstances? In addition to the social burdens with which he is presently coping, as the head of the space development project, and the powers and resonsibilities that entails, he is now stuck as an eleven-year old boy in a fifteen-year old boy's body! If I present my feelings to him now, as I have not done so before now, it would be entirely logical for him to wonder whether his changes in stature, both physical and social, might be what prompted my actions, and wonder whether or not my stated feelings will change if and when he returns to his former physical stature or if his social circumstances should alter. By refraining from doing so, by waiting until a more opportune moment, say after graduation, I am acting out of concern for his feelings, and not fear or reluctance! Do you see, Nodoka? Do you understand the subtle elegance of my plans?"

Nodoka just stared at her for a moment, before she looked over to where Haruna was hard at work in another section of the library. "Hey, Paru," she said. "Did you happen to overhear all that?"

"Every word!" Haruna replied cheerfully.

"How much of it, in your expert opinion, was rank bullshit?"

"Nodoka!" Yue gasped.

"Pretty much all of it, actually." Haruna looked up. "That said, I'm in agreement with Yue-chan's course of action."

"Eh?" Nodoka and Yue chorused.

"Oh, not for any of the bullshit arguments, of course, but for larger reasons. Mostly because I've decided to claim Negi-kun for myself, you see. He's cute as a kid, but his aged up look  _seriously_  gets my motor running. And all that social stuff? It's gravy, kids! Marrying a Prince-in-Exile is gonna lend my eventual conquests some serious, serious legitimacy! You can't buy that kind of pull. Yeah, it's gonna be great. I'll probably have him wrapped around my finger by this time tomorrow. I'd hate to wreck our friendshp by competing with you, Yue-chan, so it's really best if you bow out now." She concluded with a nod, then blinked. "Should I get some smelling salts?"

"Dammit, Haruna!" Nodoka cried as she desperately tried to revive Yue from her faint. "You overdid it!"

"... overdid what?" Haruna asked, blinking.

**To Be Continued**


	5. Nodoka, Yue

For Fate Averruncus - and he had been called that so long that, in fact, it was considerably closer to his sense of personal identity than 'Tertium' - there were relatively few pleasures in life. There was the satisfaction of the hunger he'd never really understood before he'd faced Negi Springfield in battle, which he'd voluntarily chosen to forego for the duration of his current association with the boy. There was the misery he could inflict on Springfield's obnoxious and entitled students as their substitute teacher, which was at best a dim substitute but which he embraced. There was the strange surge of something like happiness that he felt when he received a letter or even a rare phone call from his own Ministra, who seemed to be doing well in the magical world, even though they would have preferred to be here - which was impossible, of course.

And there was coffee.

To be precise, there was the quest for a truly  _fine_  cup of coffee, which seemed never-ending. Most of the coffees he'd found here in the Old World, specifically in Mahora, were at best adequate. He genuinely hoped that one day he'd taste a cup of coffee as good as the first one he'd had, long ago. But Fate, ever the realist, knew that this was likely a mirage. Still, a pleasant cup in the morning, in lieu of the breakfast that he didn't need, helped to prepare him for the struggles of the day that were to come. And so he sat at the cafe table, that early morning, and drank a cup of brew that honestly fell short of the 'adequate' mark.

"Good morning, Fate-sensei," said a familiar voice from behind him.

Fate rolled his eyes. He had few pleasures, and he didn't generally enjoy combining those he did have. Ah, well. This morning's coffee was apparently going to be combined with the pleasure of causing misery for one of the 3-A girls. And there was a sort of amusement to that thought, since, out of all of them, he supposed that he hated this one the most.

"Good morning, Miyazaki-san," he said, just the right amount of chill in his tone - not as much as he honestly felt, of course, since that would drive the girl away before he'd had his fun. "What are you doing out and about this early?" It was a superfluous question, of course, since the girl was wearing what he'd heard was called a running suit, which made the answer fairly obvious.

"I've decided to start doing a bit of an early morning run," Nodoka - to use Negi's name for the girl - explained patiently. "Since we came back here, I've noticed that I'm not getting as much, um, accidental exercise as I did over there, so I've decided to work out a bit. To keep in condition."

"Hm," he said, not expressing the contempt that he felt for the notion of this silly girl improving herself physically for challenges that would probably be better handled by just about anyone else.

Before he could say anything else, though, she peered at his table. "Is that a coffee from the kissaten over there?" she asked, gesturing in the correct direction. "They make a nice one, I think. Not quite as good as the one I told you about, though."

Fate was tempted to frown. Why had the girl reminded him of that episode? There couldn't be any gain in it for her. "Really?" he said aloud.

She shook her head. "No, indeed. The place I was thinking about uses cold brewing instead of an aeropress," she explained. "And they grind the beans just so. It's the most delicious coffee I've ever had."

He blinked. He honestly hadn't expected her to know what she was talking about, and yet ... clearly she did. And abruptly it all fell into place. "Ah," he said. "And you won't tell me where it can be found, unless I apologize for hitting you."

Now Nodoka blinked. "Oh," she said. "Is that what you think? No, no, no. That's not the way I do things at all, Fate-sensei. I've already forgiven you for  _that_. I was being very rude, back then. What you did was completely understandable."

He hesitated. "... then -" he started to ask.

"I won't tell you where it can be found, period, you petty son of a bitch," she said, in the same sweet and cheerful tone she'd been using all along. "And, incidentally, Fate-sensei? Someone who tells people that ignorance of the law is no excuse might do very well to look up some of the statutes on entrapment.

"You've had a lot of fun at our expense, these past few weeks," she continued, as he stared up at her. "Welcome to the start of 3-A's counterattack." She smiled then, and went on her way.

His coffee was cold when he began drinking again.

* * *

A few hours before she made that declaration of war, Miyazaki Nodoka made a different declaration.

"We need to have our wicked way with Negi-sensei," she said firmly. "It's the only way to prevent Haruna from having her wicked way with him."

Among the numerous sentences that Yue had never expected Nodoka to say, that ranked right up there with 'Let's burn some books!' or 'I'd like some of your fermented rutabaga juice, Yue.' And, just like she was sure she would have if she'd heard Nodoka saying either of those, she just stared at her while her best friend, rival in love and roommate patiently worked on her homework, as she'd been doing when she made that declaration.

Eventually, Nodoka looked up when she realized that Yue was staring at her, and blinked cutely. "What?" she asked.

"Okay," Yue said at last. "I'm trying ...  _really_  trying ... to understand the logic of what you just said. But perhaps I'm just a bit tired, and not thinking as clearly as you should be. That happens, sometimes, when you have an unexpected and inexplicable collapse."

"It's not inexplicable, you fainted because of what Haruna said," Nodoka interjected.

"I choose not to believe that," Yue said firmly. "I'm not completely sure that I remember what she said -"

"She said that she was going to have her wicked way with Negi-sensei now that he's stuck in a grown-up form," Nodoka reminded her helpfully.

Yue paused, took a deep breath, murmured, "Nosce teipsum." Thus fortified, she continued. "Well, then, since I didn't faint when you repeated what she said, there's no reason to think that her words alone were enough to do me in. Clearly, there is some mystery that we must investigate at a more convenient time. Moving forward from that topic -  _moving forward from that topic_ ," she repeated a bit loudly when Nodoka opened her mouth to interject. "- I'm still not sure why you think what you propose would be a good solution to that difficulty."

"Would you like me to explain?" Nodoka asked hopefully.

"No," said Yue, then packed up all of her things, and fled the room, the dorm, and the campus, eventually arriving in Ariadne where she was embraced fondly by her friends and began a long and happy life as a student and later instructor and administrator there, that happiness only slightly marred by the fact that she never heard what had happened to Nodoka, Negi-sensei or any of the other crazy people she'd known at Mahora, because this was  _her_  counterfactual, and if she wanted a little illogical element like never hearing about a famous person like Negi-sensei, she could have it, dammit.

"Please do explain," Yue said, back in the real world. "As it stands, the notion is somewhat like 'it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.'"

"We love Negi-sensei," Nodoka said, standing up.

For no good reason, Yue found herself feeling a bit faint. "That's ... that's a little -"

But Nodoka was only warming to her topic, as she stepped up on to her chair. "Whether that love is the deep and profound respect for a benevolent and kind teacher who has risked his life for our sake and that of the entire world, the all-consuming and passionate sexual desire of a girl just entering adolescence for her first crush, or any of the other emotions which could be called by the simple term of love, what you and I feel for Negi-sensei, Yue, is still a less selfish and cruel emotion than Haruna's scheming. By embracing him, we seek to improve his life as well as our own, where she only cares about her own satisfaction. We need to do this, for his good and, yes, for our own. It's the right thing to do," she concluded as she stood on top of her desk, hand held over her heart and eyes shining.

"That ..." Yue said, staring up at Nodoka, mouth dry. "That was an amazing argument."

"Thank you!" Nodoka said, blushing.

"Sophist as all hell, but amazing!"

Now Nodoka pouted. "Come on, Yue!"

"No! I'm not going to confess to Negi-sensei, and we're not going to ... I'm not even sure what it is that you want us to do -"

"What you did with Collette-san," Nodoka said, just a bit sharply, as she stepped down from her desktop.

"What?" Yue just about shrieked.

A thumping noise came from the dorm room wall, the universal code for 'keep it down'.

"I did not!" Yue insisted, in a slightly more moderate tone. "I did not cheat on you with - I mean, not that you and I are - but rather I did not -"

"Argument A," Nodoka interjected, having spent the last few minutes rummaging around in her desk and now holding up a sketch. "Provided by one Collette Farandole-san, a rough sketch of the floorplan of the Ariadne dorm room in which she and one Yue Farandole resided. Note the singular bed." Tap tap went her finger on the appropriate section of the sketch.

"That, okay, yes, but that was just because I was freeloading on Collette and she couldn't afford a second bed or bunkbeds!" protested Yue. "Nothing happened! I mean, you and I have slept in the same bed together, tons of times, when it got cold, and nothing ever happened then, right?"

Nodoka stared at her in silence for a very long time. "Yeah," she said at last, in a very dry voice.

 _I should be winning this argument,_  thought Yue, more than a bit dazedly.  _She just conceded my points, right, so I should be winning this argument. So why do I feel like she's completely -_  Yue shook her head. "So!" she said, not really sure what she was going to say next.

Perhaps Nodoka guessed that, and took some mercy on her. "Be that as it may," she said, "you can't really claim that you're 'not even sure what it is that square backets I square brackets want us to do', since you immediately guessed where I was going with that comment about Collette-san." Her eyes went distant. "I should do something nice for her. Maybe send her a fruitcake for Christmas."

"Her people celebrate Yule, not Christmas," Yue said, now completely dazed. Deep breath. "Be  _that_  as it may, I still refuse your proposal. There is no chance at all that I will ever just walk up to Negi-sensei and announce -"

* * *

"I love you sensei!" she announced, at the top of her lungs, in a plaza where dozens of people could see them both.

"Eh?" Negi replied, eyes wide.

"I'm sorry!" Yue promptly added. "I, I know that you're probably upset with me for adding more stress to your life and surprising you like this -"

"No, no!" he promptly interjected. "It's ... well, to be honest, after everything that's happened, it's not really surprising anymore," he said, a bit sheepishly. "Startling!" he added. "Very startling! But not surprising. As such."

She wasn't really listening. "And, and I'm not asking for any response, certainly not under the current circumstances! But, well, if you could see your way through to giving me an answer by grad-uu-aaaaaaaaaaa-"

As she said the word, the universe seemed to slow down, as buried memories flashed through her mind ... memories of suggesting just that course of action to him, in response to  _Nodoka's_  confession, not her own.

_I ... I did that?_

* * *

"Well," said Kotaro, a few minutes later, as Negi was being pummeled by a large number of girls for making Yue cry. (To her credit, Nodoka was comforting her friend, and all that Konoka did was lecture Negi while he was being pummeled.) "That degenerated pretty quickly." He supposed that he should be concerned for Negi's welfare, but somehow, he just didn't feel up to it.

"True," agreed Kaede, also standing back and watching with interest. (Who knew that Madoka possessed such a talent for grappling as she was presently employing to hold Negi in place?) "And yet, one cannot truly claim to be surprised at how it did so."

"Huh?" Kotaro blinked as he turned from what could possibly be considered a riot to look at her. "I didn't have a clue that Chibsuke felt like that. You saying you did?"

"Only that it is not a surprise. One rather suspects that the majority of Negi-bouzu's ministra have some level of affection for him, so such developments as this, in truth, should occur more frequently than they do."

"Well, I guess that does make wait wait wait wait, doesn't that include you?" Kotaro asked abruptly, gazing up at her with mild confusion.

Kaede coughed politely, covering her mouth with her hand, because she was polite, of course, and certainly not to cover any blush that spread across her cheeks. "My, such a direct question, Kotaro-kun. Whence comes such curiousity, all of a sudden?" Turning an inconvenient question back on the one who'd asked it was an old ninja trick.

Ironically, it was a completely unnecessary ninja trick, in this particular instance. Kaede's brief delay in answering had given Kotaro time to think about who else might have 'some level of affection for him' ... and the thought didn't make him particularly happy. "Kaede-ne," he began to say, in a serious tone.

"It is merely a certain pleasure that I feel in seeing a young man growing into strength and wisdom, not anything -" she began to respond.

"What?" Kotaro asked, blankly.

"What?" Kaede asked, just as blankly.

"... I asked you first," he pointed out ... then groaned a bit. "What am I,  _eight_?" he asked quietly. With a shake of his head, he continued. "Look, never mind that now. Kaede-ne, I think I need some advice."

Kaede actually blinked. She had volunteered to become Kotaro's mentor, and taught him quite a few things in the brief interim between the school festival and the start of their adventure in the Magical World. But in all that time, he'd never asked her for advice.

 _SQUEEE!_  went the part of her mind that cherished the sight of a young man growing into strength and wisdom. Fortunately, it was outnumbered by the rest of it, which recognized the seriousness of the situation. "I see," she said, in a somber tone which suggested she had never even heard the noise 'squee'. "Let us then withdraw to a place where we might enjoy some privacy ere we speak on such matters."

Kotaro nodded. "Yeah. Good practice for the free-running event I'm in - that tower, over there?"

"Let us be off."

* * *

Eventually, of course, pummeling an invulnerable opponent loses its luster, and the fact that the person in whose name they were nominally punishing Negi was now asking them to stop it eventually got through to them. With a certain amount of name-calling, most of the girls headed on their way back to class.

"I'm sorry, Sensei!" Yue assured him as she and Nodoka helped him back to his feet. "I didn't want any of this to happen, really I didn't!"

"It's all right, it's all right, Yue-san," he reassured her, smiling as ever. "No harm done. Well, my clothes are a little messed up, but -"

"Also Fuuka and Fumika used markers to write various unpleasant names on your face while the rest were holding you down," Nodoka informed him.

"Really?" Negi asked, looking a bit startled. "How clever!"

"But it's water-soluble, so -"

"And socially responsible, too!" He coughed, perhaps forcing himself to calm down a little. "Well, I guess I should head for a washroom as soon as possible. Um, but first, I think I should answer Yue-san's -"

"No, no, no, it can wait uhntuhl uh uhhh?" Yue concluded as she realized that Nodoka was covering her mouth with her hands.

"Yes, sensei, I think that might be a good idea. But not immediately. Not right now."

"Duhs wuh uh wuhsh guhnha suh, Nuhduhkuh, wuh uh yuh -"

"And not here, either. It's too public a place, and - hey! Hey, you, with the camera! Get a life, will you!" Nodoka promptly calmed down as she resumed talking to Negi. "- so, what I'm suggesting is, if you could think it over and let us know how you feel about us tonight, and we could meet and discuss it in one of the more secure vaults of Library Island, this evening." She nodded forcefully, not even momentarily letting go of her grip on Yue's mouth.

Negi gazed in mild bemusement at the two of them. Eventually, he nodded. "All right, that sounds like a good idea. Um, whereabouts in the building are we going to meet?"

"I'll let you know as soon as I pick it out," Nodoka assured him.

"Well, I'm sure that you know the library much better than I do, so I'll leave that to you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go find a washroom." He visibly steeled himself - not an easy thing to do when one has the words 'horndog extraordinaire' emblazoned on one's forehead.

"See you this evening," Nodoka said as he strolled off, waving politely.

"Suh yuh dus uhvuh - Nuhduhkuh!"

"That worked out rather nicely, I think," Nodoka said absently, as she finally took her hand off Yue's mouth.

"I think so too!" said Haruna, stepping out from behind the cover where she'd been lurking. "So, where are we going to be seeing him this evening?"

"Gyahhh!" Yue and Nodoka responded, jerking back from her.

"Wow, I'm feeling strangely unloved at the moment," Haruna commented blandly as she flipped her sketchbook closed, in the process dispelling the statue she'd idly added to the layout of the courtyard, behind which she - and Konoka, who now stood revealed - had been hiding.

"What - Haruna, what are you still doing here?" Nodoka finally demanded.

"What are  _you_  still doing here?" Haruna replied easily.

"Okay, could we just agree that 'I asked you first' is banned from conversation?" Konoka asked warily.

"What do you think we are, twelve?" Haruna and Nodoka snapped without looking at her.

* * *

Kotaro sneezed.

"Gesundheit," Kaede said faintly as she considered him. He stood there, rubbing his nose, as he looked away from her, not so much in shame as in a sort of humiliation.

When she spoke next, it was in as serious a voice as he'd ever heard from her. "I see. That's ... not what I would have ever expected." Her lips pursed momentarily. "Of course, I say this, and then I immediately reconsider, for such things are happening more frequently than I would have expected, lately."

"Eh?" Kotaro asked, turning back to look at her.

She quickly shook her head. "I shall not elaborate, Kotaro-kun. I shall keep your secrets from all others, but I must also keep those of others from you, as well."

"Are you talking about Negi?" he asked.

Now she blinked. "What are you talking about?"

He rubbed his head as he looked away again. "Back atcha with the secret keeping stuff, I guess."

She stared at him for a moment, before pressing on. "Returning to your situation, then ... I take it things have become somewhat awkward in your home, since then."

"Yeah," the boy replied, face scrunched up. "Awkward, that's, that's a nice safe way of putting it, neechan! She, Chizuru-ne, she doesn't even look at me anymore, and I think about what she said, and I'm thinking, I'm thinking I must've really messed up somehow, but I don't know what I did and I don't know how to make amends and I can't  _punch_  my way out of this and -"

"Kotaro-kun! Be calm."

The interjection at least quieted him, though she honestly thought he was probably closer to breaking down in tears than he'd been since the martial arts tournament.

Kaede drew in a deep breath. "Did you, by word or deed, force or compel Chizuru-san to do anything?"

"I -" He closed his eyes. "I said that I needed to, to get release, and she'd said she was willing to help, but, I mean, I-I-I could have -"

"I will take all that, I think, as a no," Kaede concluded. "What you have done, then, was not wrong ... but it may have been hurtful nonetheless. And in this, I am as weak and as foolish as you, Kotaro-kun, for I do not know how to mend hurt feelings, as I have lately learned to my own distress."

"Huh?" he asked.

Slowly, Kaede stood up from the wall against which she'd been leaning, and lowered herself down into a lotus. "Sit thyself down," she said, "and a tale I thee shall tell."

Kotaro looked completely bewildered, but nonetheless joined Kaede in sitting on the rooftop, waiting patiently to hear what she had to say.

"Mukashi, mukashi -"

So much for patience. "Hold it. Holllld it. This is a story about you, right? Not some fairy tale characters from long ago and far away?"

"There are proprieties to be observed," Kaede said primly. "Ahem. There was once a young girl who, sent to live with her grandparents for a few years owing to certain difficulties her parents were experiencing - which do not come into this story," she added quickly, seeing a question developing on Kotaro's face. "- and so the girl who was sent to live with her grandparents learned many skills that her parents, like most of their generation, had dismissed as irrelevant."

"She learned to be a ninja, in other words," Kotaro summarized.

"To put it in a unnecessarily brusque manner, yes, she learned to be a ninja. And, having done so, and having passed a few years in the doing, she returned home to learn that she would be packed off to a boarding school, since the certain difficulties -"

"Okay, these difficulties are starting to seem like the sort of thing that should be coming into the story!" he protested.

"And yet they do not. She was sent off to boarding school, where, somewhat to her surprise, she found it easy to make friends. She found many who would be her friends, who would also be her allies in battle, and who made her aware of noble causes for which to do battle. And yet, for all that, she found that her life seemed a bit empty, for she had no one who could be ... more than a friend.

"And then everything changed, for she found herself facing one of those whom she had thought of as an ally of some worth in battle ... and it was like nothing she had ever been through before. To fight this particular friend-turned-foe was to test her abilities to the utmost and then beyond. She found herself looking for excuses to do so, over and over and over again ... even, in a repetition of one battle, while on a friendly excursion to the local movie theatre a day or so previous. And it was then that she finally admitted to herself what she should have known long since - that this foe, this rival, this peer ... this person commanded far more of her heart than she had ever realized. And she confessed this, at last."

"Uh-huh. So what'd Tatsumiya-san say?"

Kaede's eyes actually opened all the way as she stared at him in shock. "What gave you the impression that I was speaking of -"

"Oh, come  _on_. I mean, I'm wondering whether there's something in the water in this screwy school, but still, who the heck am I supposed to think you're talking about?"

Kaede rubbed the back of her neck, clearly annoyed. "She said she doesn't swing that way," she muttered, completely abandoning any archaic dialect. "Which pisses me off  _so_  much, because - ahem. To resume, the girl of whom we have been speaking -"

"Oioioi, are we seriously -"

"The girl of whom we have been speaking attempted to ... persuade her rival that matters were other than her rival believed, in the process perhaps driving a wedge between the two of them that may never be healed, for they both have too much pride to back down. The moral of the story is, beware foolish pride. The end," she concluded, looking away from Kotaro.

Who stared at her. "Y'know ... that's actually a pretty helpful story, Kaede-neechan."

"Really. Despite it getting interrupted so frequently," she replied, still pouting a bit.

"The message might be messed up a bit by the medium," he protested.

"What?" she asked.

"Hey, I been hanging out with Fate and Negi, I pick up stuff, okay? Geez!"

* * *

Just a short while later, Kotaro burst into the dorm room where he'd lived up until recently. "Chizu-ne, I'm sorry!" he declared as soon as he was through the door, running down the hallway to the living room. "I'm the bad guy! I shouldn't have pressured you, even a little bit! I don't care if we never have sex again, but I don't want us to be fighting! Please, please accept my apology!"

Then he arrived in the living room, where Chizuru had just settled down to dinner with Ayaka and Natsumi, along with Satsuki, who'd been invited over to have a nice dinner made and served by someone else for a change.

They stared at him. He stared at them.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the utensils that Natsumi had been holding slipped out of her hands.

* * *

Asuna frowned as she chewed the rice. It was sadly undercooked, she decided. If this was going to keep happening, she was going to need to practice, hopefully under Konoka's supervision. That would actually be nice, learning to cook from her, so that when the time came -

She jerked her thoughts away from that direction.

That would be nice, learning to cook from her. She'd ask her about it when Konoka and Negi got back from wherever they'd gone off, all secretive, this even-

There was a knock at the door. She got up and walked over to open it.

"'Sup," said Kotaro, face covered with dozens of slap marks. "Mind if I move in here for a few days?"

* * *

"Yue, are you sure this will work?" Nodoka asked hesitantly.

It was a welcome return to how things had been, months earlier, Yue decided. Then, she'd been the one who made the bold, cunning plans and Nodoka was the one who followed them. Somehow - and analyzing that 'somehow' would be a welcome diversion once they were in a safe enough place to afford diversions - things had reversed themselves over time, with Nodoka gaining determination and herself learning timidity and uncertainty. She did not believe that either position was totally bad, but being in control of their voyages, for the first time in a long time, felt really good.

She turned back to explain some of this to Nodoka and reassure her in the process, then saw where they were and just said, "Duck," as she suited her own actions to her word.

Someone else would have blinked and asked why. Or perhaps even where. Nodoka had dropped the instant she heard the first syllable out of Yue's mouth.

The chain that swept across the corridor where they were walking, which would have at least pinned them both to the opposite wall and quite possibly broken a few bones that they really needed, passed harmlessly over their heads.

"In answer to your question," Yue said, very calmly, without rising, "yes, I'm sure this will work. We told Haruna that we would be going to vault XJ-62 to rendezvous with Negi. Then we contacted Negi-sensei, through the pactio cards, and told him that we'd be meeting him in vault XK-26, and gave him directions to get to vault XJ-62. That way,  _when_  Haruna or Konoka ask him where he's meeting us, he'll tell them that he's going somewhere else. They won't think to ask him how he's going to get there, and so won't think that he's been told to give them misinformation.

"Further," she continued, as a  _second_  chain, meant to catch anyone who'd dodged the first, swept across the corridor and (again) went over their heads, "the path that we're using to get to to vault XJ-62 is identical to the path that leads to vault XK-26 for the first dozen or so steps of their descent itineraries, so that even if Haruna thinks to ask Negi-sensei how he's going there, she's bound to get bored of the recitation before she can realize the trick. And Konoka isn't suspicious enough to ask. So we're in the clear."

Nodoka gazed at her.

"What?" Yue asked, a little unsettled by that gaze.

"Is this a three chain corridor or a two?" Nodoka asked.

The third chain whistled over their heads.

"Three," Yue said, with equal certainty to what she'd already said.

"I am so glad to have you back again," Nodoka said,  _that_  smile spreading across her face.

Yue blushed. "I didn't, I wasn't, I -"

"Uh-huh," said Nodoka, starting to crawl forward down the corridor. "Down this hallway, then find the hidden catch in the ceilling mural, right?"

* * *

At last, they reached the door marked "Vault XJ-62", and, being veterans of the Library Exploration Club, ignored the obvious trap to open the actual ingress, which was a concealed trap door on the floor in front of it. It was dark inside, of course, since it contained photo-sensitive documents, so they were very careful as they descended the rungs of the ladder.

"All right," said the glowing eyes which were Nodoka to the glowing eyes which were Yue. "We made it, now we just have to wait for Negi-sensei to get here and hope that he doesn't get caught in too many of the traps."

"I'm sure that he'll be just fine," said the glowing eyes which were Yue.

"But wouldn't it have been a good idea to make sure he went in the company of an expert explorer all the same?" asked the third set of glowing eyes which had just opened, floating over the other two sets of eyes.

Silence momentarily reigned in the vault, broken by the cracking sound of a glowstick being snapped, to dimly illuminate a huge grin beneath shiny glasses.

"Haruna, how?" Yue asked, voice thick with frustration and disbelief.

"Oh, Yue. Yue, Yue, Yue.  _It was **obvious**._"

* * *

"You're doing really well at exploring, Negi-kun!" Konoka told him enthusiastically as she helped him up out of the rubble that remained of the 'very thin floorboards over rapid-setting concrete' trap he'd just set off.

"Well, thank you, Konoka, but I'm not sure how you can have that opinion, with the way that I keep setting all these traps off," Negi said, dusting himself off with a somewhat hapless expression on his face.

She held up an index finger. "Ah, but then you see, you're only on your second expedition, and here we are in a level 9 area. The only more heavily guarded section is the one that I don't know about and doesn't contain my grandfather's love letters to someone who pretty clearly wasn't my grandmother," she confided. Or technically didn't confide. "You should be setting off far more traps than you actually are - I'd say that you're actually avoiding at  _least_  one in three of them. That would mean that you're at least a level 3 explorer! I didn't manage that until my twelfth expedition! Of course, since the system isn't really calibrated for someone superhuman like you, so it's sort of meaningless in your case." Nod nod nod went her head.

"Right," said Negi.

"And even if that wasn't so, it's sort of ridiculous, because even one level 9 trap that someone set off under normal conditions would probably put that person in the hospital for a few weeks, so you can't really talk about missing two out of three like that," she mused, tapping her chin.

"Uh-huh,"said Negi, before coughing politely. "Um, Konoka, I've been meaning to ask you ... why exactly do you do something as dangerous as exploring this library, anyway?"

She looked at him with a bewildered expression. "Because it's there."

 _... I shouldn't be having headaches,_  Negi thought.  _Invulnerable people shouldn't get headaches, surely._  "Well, let's press on, then. I think we're almost at the end of the itinerary that they gave me ... ah, and yes, there it is, the door ... and an open trapdoor in the floor. I think we can count  _that_  trap as having been avoided," Negi said as he stepped around the hole and walked towards the doorway.

"Um, actually, Negi-kun, the trap door is the vault entry and the doorway is - oh, I see you've discovered that for yourself. Let me get that glue off of you, I have some dissolving fluid here. But I think that jacket's a loss, so ..."

"I've never hated anyone as much as I hate whoever designed this building's traps, Konoka," Negi told her, smiling brightly.

"Ooookay then," Konoka told him, guiding him over to the ladder down. "I'm sure that we'll get down there and have a nice long laugh with the others about all of this."

"Let me kill her!" Yue was shrieking as she was held back by Nodoka with some difficulty, while her hands reached out and clawed the air in the general direction of Haruna, standing nearby and smirking. "Just this once! Let me kill the smug little -"

"If this keeps up, I'm going to be drummed out of the fortune telling club," Konoka grumbled as she dropped down to the floor.

"Hey, you made it, Negi-kun! And in one piece, too!" Haruna said. "Wow, don'cha wish someone had picked a more accessible vault for this tryst?

"Die die die!" Yue snarled at her. "I bid you death!"

"Yue-san!" Negi said reprovingly. "That's not nice!" A brief pause. "Unless Haruna-san designed the traps, in which case -"

"Nope," Haruna interjected  _very quickly_. "Anyway, that's not important, right now." Saotome reached up to take off her glasses as she looked at him, their removal making her look very vulnerable. "Negi-sensei ... seeing Yue confess to you like that has made me realize that it's my time to be brave, too. I've hidden my feelings for so long out of concern for my friends, but now I know that I have to be true to myself. Negi-sensei ...  _I love you!_ "

"... no you don't," Negi replied after a moment.

Haruna pulled her glasses back on. "Oh come on, couldn't you be all discombobulated like you were when  _they_  did it?" she protested.

"I'm sorry, Haruna-san, but while a sincere expression of emotions can do that to me, I'm afraid that I know you too well to believe that you're being serious," Negi replied, sounding genuinely apologetic but also firm.

Haruna momentarily pouted. "Am I really that -"

"YES!" Yue shouted, augmented by Nodoka's somewhat fainter affirmation.

"I didn't even get to the adjective," Haruna protested.

"Insincere, shallow,  _smug_ , malicious,  _smug_  -" Yue listed off.

"You already said smug."

"Not helping, Konoka," Nodoka grunted.

"Woe is me!" Haruna declared, gazing up at the vault ceilling. "Those who know me best, with whom I have stood time and again, view me as some manner of poltroon! Here I stand, making a maidenly declaration of love and devotion -"

"Maidenly my ass!" Yue yelled.

"Yue-san!" Negi gasped. "That's very bad language, and you're going far beyond ordinary insult -"

"Eh, no, that one's fair, that ship  _has_  sailed," Haruna admitted. "It was the only way I could get the starter money for the BL publishing boom I started, over in the magical world."

That revelation silenced the room for a minute.

"Haruna-san!" Negi at last said, clearly appalled. "You, you -"

"You  _manipulative_  -" Yue began to growl.

"What? Oh - oh, hey, no! I didn't tell you that to make anybody feel - geez, you guys!" Now she sounded genuinely upset. "You don't trust me at all, do you?"

Yue opened her mouth to answer that.

"Fine," the taller girl sighed. "Then the only thing for me to do is to show you that I'm deserving of your trust, and the only way for me to do that is for me to back off. Okay, then. Konoka, let's back off so that these two can do what they need to do."

Konoka was giving Haruna a rather skeptical look that really reminded Negi of her mother's expression when dealing with the Headmaster, but she acquiesced to Haruna's request and stepped back, away from Negi and their two fellow club members.

"Thank you, Haruna," Nodoka said before Yue could say anything. "Negi-sensei, let me get right to the point. I've confessed my feelings to you, and so has Yue. And Yue and I are best friends, as I'm sure that you know."

"... oh dear," Negi said, for once getting a bit ahead of the conversation. "Are we in a love triangle?

"Yes, Negi-sensei. And rather than allow this situation to end up like those that  _a certain person_  told you about -"

"I'm standing right heeeere!" came from the shadows.

Nodoka ignored that. "- I have come up with a much better solution. I was reluctant to implement it, but matters have progressed, and I don't think that there are any other viable options." She took a deep breath. "So, the two of us are going to have sex with you. And each other. Right now." She nodded, calmly, and began to open her blouse.

"Wait, what?" Negi and Yue chorused.

"Nodoka! You never said anything about -" Yue continued speaking alone while Negi simply stared.

"Yue." Nodoka grabbed her and wrapped her arms around her shorter friend, much as she had earlier that day when Yue had been weeping as her memories returned. "For once in your life, please, please, don't  _over-think_  things." Without further ado, she bent down and pressed her lips to Yue's own.

Yue's eyes went wide, then contracted to tiny black dots, then began moving rapidly in swirly-shaped motions. Nodoka might have giggled if she'd seen it happening, but her eyes were unfortunately closed. And once they opened, when she'd pulled back, she had other things on her mind.

"I've always loved you, Yue. From the very first moment we met, to this," Nodoka confided softly. "I could just never admit it before. Even when I was  _shown_  what I wanted, I couldn't accept it." She smiled sweetly. "But then I lost you, and I realized that to get you back, I'd do ... just about anything. And once I knew that, I understood what it all meant. I love you, Yue. I love you, and I love Negi-sensei, and I want us all to be together, always." Another kiss, deeper this time, her tongue doing to Yue's tongue what her hands were doing to the other girl's hips.

"Buh-" Yue stammered once Nodoka pulled back again. "But, but, what about Negi-sensei, he might not -"

"Look at him, Yue," Nodoka quietly commanded. "Look at him looking at us." In fact Negi was doing so, and while his face was expressing shock, it was impossible to miss a certain tension in the lower portions of his form. "He likes it. He probably watches Konoka and Setsuna-san doing just this sort of thing -"

"Well, yes," Konoka's voice said from the shadows. "But I think he likes watching me and Asuna doing it more."

Nodoka momentarily appeared a bit thrown by this, to say nothing of Yue. For his part, Negi only raised a hand to the back of his head and rubbed it, smiling awkwardly.

"Oh," said Nodoka. " _Oh._  You see, Yue? You see now? We need to move on this! Or else -"

"Okay," Yue whimpered.

Nodoka would have liked to exult at her victory, but if she was right, there really wasn't any time for that. So, without further ado, she guided Yue's steps over to where Negi was still standing, and drew him into her and Yue's embrace, kissing him for a full minute before pulling back and pushing Yue and Negi's lips together. The sight of her two loves kissing her excited her, but with the same focus and discipline that had let her become an ace ruin explorer, she kept her mind on the prize.

The 'prize', of course, was inside Negi's pants. Thus, while Yue and Negi kissed - rather frantically, she thought - she slipped down to undo his belt and zipper, then pull down his boxers to reveal -

"Ghhhhgghhhh!" Nodoka expressed as she saw it for the first time.

"N-Nodoka-san!" Negi gasped, pulling back from Yue's increasingly hungry kisses at the sound of dismay he'd just heard. "What, what's the matt-"

"It's, it's just so -" she stammered, staring at it. "It's much bigger than any - than I was expecting," she continued, hoping no one noticed the way she'd changed course in the middle of the sentence. As it happened, Negi didn't notice. Neither did Yue. She might have, but she was somewhat distracted by the way that she went all cross-eyed as she stared down at what Nodoka was also contemplating.

"It's okay, Nodoka-san," he reassured her quickly. "We don't have to do anything, we can just, I don't know, kiss and cuddle or whatever, you don't have to do anything you're not comfortable with, and I'd actually be happier -"

All the while that he spoke, Yue was slowly, ever-so-slowly, dropping down until her face was level with Nodoka's. They exchanged a glance as he spoke about 'not comfortable', and then Nodoka took a deep breath. "Sensei," she said, breaking in to his monologue about abstinence.

"Yes?" he asked faintly.

"We're going to fuck you now." And without further ado, she opened her mouth and popped the tip of the monstrosity into it.

Hesitantly, not at all certain that this was what she wanted but determined not to be less brave than her friend, Yue followed her action, pressing her own lips to the shaft, kissing and licking it. She broke off of that in a gasp as she felt a pair of fingers undoing the button of her shorts, but a glance down confirmed that if was Nodoka's right hand, her left being occupied by caressing the dangling ... things ... at the base of the shaft.

Nodoka's eyes, until now closed, opened to gaze into Yue's eyes. There was so much hunger in those eyes, but so much happiness, too.

 _She really does love me as much as she loves him,_  Yue thought ... and there was just a trace of despair in the idea, for she wasn't at all sure that she felt the same way. But their lips met as they exchanged their methodologies of blowjob mechanics, and, for a while, those concerns abated.

"Hot damn," Haruna mused as she watched from the shadows. "Those two sure got a lot braver while I wasn't watching, I'll tell you. If the first one I ever saw had been that big, I'd have -"

"Haruna," Konoka, standing beside her, and sounding far more serious than she normally did. "When were you going to tell us about that?"

The artist flinched. The accurate, honest answer - 'about five minutes after never' - would not go over all that well, she suspected. "It's not that big a deal. It was just a few days of unpleasant crap. Why dwell on it?"

"Because we're your friends, Haruna. That has to mean something more than 'people you have good times with', or it doesn't really mean anything at all."

"I don't tell you about all the crap I go through whenever a book isn't coming together, why should I bother you with this?" Haruna replied defensively. "Anyway, it's over, it's done. I don't, I don't want to -" She broke off, conscious of the fact that tears were starting to flow from her eyes. She hated crying. She'd always hated it. Only the pretty girls in shoujo stories could make it work, and Saotome Haruna had long since realized that her life would never be a shoujo manga.

She was also conscious that Konoka was hugging her. "You don't want to talk about it. That's okay. I can wait," the healer murmured. Then took a deep breath. "Do you mind if I touch you while they're doing it?"

Haruna blinked, confusion momentarily driving the unwanted tears away. "Touching, as in -"

"As in."

"Hah. I figured you'd be getting enough from Setchan and -"

The grip tightened  _just_  a bit. "There's no such thing as enough," Konoka said, now definitely pressing up against Haruna in all sorts of interesting ways. "Come on, Haruna, it's not like we're between thirteen and fifteen anymore."

"Oookay, then," Haruna said, and turned to face her just enough that their lips could meet.

Konoka really had made an enormous amount of progress, Haruna decided a moment later, as her partner slid one hand up her sweater and the other under the hemline of her skirt. Hadn't it only been a month ago that she'd had her first kiss with a girl? (Admittedly after months of trying to get said girl to kiss her.) And yet here she was, going all the way with a completely different girl. Another person might have felt a bit bittersweet about the loss of her friend's innocence, but Haruna had never had much regard for innocence.

Which was why her reaction to being reminded of her own loss of it was so very baffling to her.

Yet as her panties were slid aside and two little fingers slid in another direction altogether, and Haruna's head lolled back in a way that almost dislodged her glasses, she supposed that this was a nice compensation for all that she'd been through. Here she was, in one of the places she loved best in the world - this place and Big Sight were tied for first - with the people she loved best in the world - well, it would have been nice if a certain manga artist who was known for being friendly with the groupies was here, but that was a quibble - doing something as great as fiveway sex.

Well, okay, so far it was only a threesome and the two of them off to the side, but Haruna could smell the incipient fivesome. It had a different stench than the love reek, so she was sure that she wasn't getting them confused. It might be nice to keep her eyes on said threesome to spot the perfect time to join in, so she tilted her head back to get a look at them.

"Ouch!" she said a moment later in response to a bite on her tit.

"Eyes on me, Haruna," Konoka's silky voice spoke to her.

It was probably for the best. The moment would speak to her if it was meant to happen.

As with the deep kissing, once Nodoka was satisfied that Yue had the hang of the blowjob, she left off of her own involvement to focus on the next phase of the experience. This involved stripping off her shirt and shorts, leaving her in just her bra, panties and hiking boots. (She did not even remotely consider taking off her boots. This was still Library Island.) She then turned to do the same for Yue, gently caressing her form as she denuded it - though of course, all that she could do with the shirt and undershirt beneath was to roll them both up to Yue's breasts.

She paused, to kiss those tiny teats, before lifting her head to Yue's ear. "Yue," she said, a bit hoarsely. "We're going to do it, now. We're going to have sex with him." Deep breath. "Do you want to have him inside of you first?"

Yue pulled back from the manhood, gasping for breath and most likely because of emotion as well. "I," she stammered. "I-I-aiyaiyai -"

"You are not being selfish," Nodoka said, as firmly as she could. "You are not. I am asking. I want an honest answer. Do you want to have sex first, or do you want to watch me do it so you know what it's like. Which do you want, Yue?"

Perhaps having the problem stated so baldly helped Yue to find the solution. "... watch ..." she muttered, amidst things too quiet for Nodoka to hear.

"Thank you, Yue," Nodoka said, kissing her once. Then she raised her voice. "Negi-sensei, please lie down."

He'd been silent during all of this, save for gasps of obvious pleasure. Now he opened his mouth to say something ... but whatever it was, he sighed instead of saying it, and then added, as he began to sit down, "All right."

Down on the rough stone floor, he lay for a second before Nodoka slowly straddled him, staring down at his face, into his eyes, as she manipulated his erection until it was in the right position to push up into her. As the tip pressed in, she made a face. "Yue," she said. "Please sit on Negi-sensei's face."

"Wha -" he said, before he was interrupted by Yue doing just that.

Nodoka looked at Yue. Yue looked at Nodoka. Nodoka lifted her hands, reached out to set them on Yue's slender shoulders ... then pushed herself down and held herself back from screaming in agony only by whatever strength she was drawing up out of her dearest friend, who promptly brought up her own arms to hold them against Nodoka's own.

Had Negi seen her, he would have stopped her. And that would never do.

Yue was somewhat used to the way that her mind could, if permitted, run a mile a minute, if not faster. The novelty, if you could call it a novelty, was that her thoughts normally  _didn't_  do that when she was doing something, only when she was idle. And she certainly wasn't idle now, was she? No, wait, was she? She was! Technically, Yue supposed that she actually was idle, now that she gave it a few seconds of thought. After all, she wasn't  _doing_  anything, really, just sitting there, with her hindquarters perched on Negi-sensei's face, her own face screwed up as she felt him licking her down there and doing it surprisingly well. Not that she had much basis for comparison because Collette  _hadn't_  ever done that to her no matter what Nodoka seemed to think. And she had been mostly asleep that one time that she'd woken up and seen Emily and Beatrix doing something that she hadn't been able to see very well but which they'd certainly seemed to enjoy quite a bit before she'd finally forced herself to close her eyes and go to sleep despite how much she was blushing. Just like she was blushing right now as Negi licked her down there, while Nodoka, in front of her, their arms gripping each other almost painfully, rocked her hips back and forth on that that that that that -

And then Nodoka let go of her grip on Yue's arms and collapsed forward, head dropping to press against Yue's still almost-flat chest, kissing her nipples for a moment, before looking up.

"You're afraid, aren't you?" Nodoka said, so quietly, despite the loud gasps she made on either side of those intelligible words. "You're afraid that you don't love me as much as I love you."

 _How did she know?_  Yue wanted to scream, even though she knew that if she started screaming right then she was never going to be able to stop.

"You're wrong," Nodoka said. "You love me, and I love you, and it's the same. I'll show you that it's the same. I'll show you."

What, what could she possibly mean by that, and why was she kissing down her stomach, and coming face to face with Negi-sensei, and -

 _Oh, that's what she could possibly mean by that,_  was Yue's last coherent thought before her brain turned to mush as Nodoka began licking her down there in conjunction with Negi, even as her hips kept moving atop him, pumping him.

"You know," Haruna said, between licks at Konoka's pussy, "it strikes me ... as being a little unfair ... that you get to watch ... those three ... and I have to keep -"

"Shhh," said Konoka, pulling Haruna's face deeper into her core with a knee wrapped around her friend's neck and shoulders. "Of course I'm fair. I'm always fair. Even when I'm unfair, I'm always fair."

That didn't make sense of course, but Haruna wasn't in any position to object. She did, however, have the ability to express her displeasure a bit more directly, and did so.

"Ah!" Konoka gasped in mild pain from the bite on her thigh ... then groaned a moment later, when she realized that the shock had closed her eyes just long enough for her to miss a rather critical moment. When she looked at the trio before her in the glowstick's dim light, she could see Yue's eyes tightly shut and her mouth wide open as she quivered and shook and silently screamed in what was an obviously explosive orgasm.

"Can you taste her, Negi-sensei? Can you taste our Yue's sweet cum?" Nodoka murmured to him as she licked his chin. "I can taste her on you, so I  _know_  that you can. I want it, too. Give it to me. No," she added, just a bit sharply, as Negi began to push Yue's still-convulsing form off of his face. "Not with your mouth. Give it to me with thiiiis." She bit her lip as her hips twisted on him.

"Ah," Negi said, grasping her meaning, as he began to meet her downward strokes by pumping up into her.

"Yesss, that's that's that's - ahh!" Nodoka's voice caught on that single high note as she felt the surge of his release spraying up into her. The flow of warmth triggered her own climax, and she, too shook atop him for a few long moments.

When the ecstasy faded, Nodoka wearily pushed herself up and off of him, preparing herself mentally for the next phase of her plan, which would require Negi to be hard once more and so - but her chain of thought was broken as she stared at the member which, while dripping with their combined juices, was still more or less erect. Nodoka blinked, then looked up at Negi's face - visible now that Yue had collapsed off of it.

He gave her an apologetic smile for some reason.

She blinked again. With a shake of her head, she moved on to the  _next_  phase, crawling up to where Yue was still trembling as she lay on the floor above Negi's head. She bent down to kiss Yue's forehead. "How much do you love me, Yue?" she asked, not really expecting a coherent answer.

So she was somewhat shocked when Yue's eyes focused on her. "I love you more than truth," she said.

Nodoka nearly froze as she realized what she'd just been told. Tears began to fall from her eyes. "And I love you," she said. "And I love you ... more than books." Far more gently than she'd been planning, she reached down to spread Yue's hips wide. "Sensei," she said more loudly than she'd been speaking. "Come here and give our Yue what you just gave me."

He looked at her, then looked at Yue ... and with an air of one surrendering, he rolled himself up into a seated position and came over to crouch between Yue's legs, held up and open by Nodoka's firm hands. Without direction, he pushed himself up into her virgin passage, as gently as he could.

"It's good, Yue?" Nodoka asked as he began to move back and forth within her.

"So good!" Yue cried. "I, I -"

"Have what we gave me," Nodoka said, then plopped herself down on Yue's mouth to let the cream deposited within her drip down there. Yue made a groan of deepest pleasure.

"Thank you for this gift, Sensei," Nodoka said, still holding Yue's legs wide as she faced him.

He opened his mouth to reply.

"It  _is_  a gift," she said before he could say anything. "It is not the curse you think. We love you, and we always have. No matter what happens, I will never regret being with you like this."

She smiled at him, the sweet smile he loved so much.

"You're incredible, Nodoka," he told her as he pounded into Yue.

Was it the yobisute and Yue's tongue up inside her that pushed her into her first orgasm? Who could say?

"But, but -" Negi began to stammer, as though he'd just lost all the ground that he gained.

"What?" Nodoka asked, pouting a bit.

"I think Yue might be having trouble breathing," he finally whimpered.

Nodoka blinked, as she tried to understand what she'd just been told. Then, with a yelp, she let go of Yue's legs - which obligingly collapsed to land on Negi's hips - and backed up off of her friend's face. Yue, eyes almost glazed over, promptly coughed a bit as her airway cleared.

"Yue!" Nodoka cried. "Why didn't you say something?"

That earned her a pair of incredulous looks, each of slightly different sort.

"Yue, do you want to sto-" Negi began to ask.

Her hands, which had been resting on the floor, reached up towards him. "More," she rasped.

With Nodoka's help, Yue rose up from her supine position to dangle in front of Negi's chest, her hands wrapped around the back of his neck as she rocked back and forth, up and down, kissing him deeply as she did, then turning to kiss Nodoka as the other girl tried to embrace both of them.

"Hnnn," Yue announced. "Cumming. Cumming. AH!" Once again, she silently screamed her release to the ceiling, her vulva tightening around Negi's member and drawing a second ejaculation up into her. "Hahhhhhh," she continued, once she'd calmed down a bit. "I love you," she said, to both of them perhaps.

"And I love you," Nodoka replied, in the same way.

"And I love you too!" declared Haruna as she snapped on a second glow-stick to replace the one that was faltering a bit, revealing that she was stripped totally naked (except for her glasses) and smiling at the three of them in obvious delight while Konoka lay back with the smile of the very satisfied.

"No you don't," Negi, Yue  _and_  Nodoka chorused.

"Just because I'm only saying it to get some action doesn't mean it's completely untrue, you know?" Haruna protested. "There are  _degrees_  of this sort of thing. Don't look at me like that. Geez, come on, are you really going to deny me the same joys you've just enjoyed?"

"Yes," said Yue, glaring as she tightened her grip around Negi's neck.

Haruna closed her eyes and shook her head, with an expression of profound sorrow. "I don't know who taught you to be so selfish."

"It was you," Yue 'explained'.

"Haruna, come on," Nodoka interjected, trying to make some sort of peace. "Negi-sensei can't possibly do that again immediately -"

"Are you kidding?" Konoka said, laughing a bit. "He can go for hours!"

"... thank you for sharing that bit of enlightenment, Konoka," Negi said dryly.

"You're welcome!"

"Reallly," Haruna said, ignoring that bit of byplay. "For hours, you say. I find that somewhat hard to believe, if you'll pardon the pun." She abruptly sat down, perching her chin on her folded hands and her elbows on her knees. "I think I'll need a demonstration. Of course, if nobody wants to demonstrate, I'll be happy to -"

"You just stay where you are!" Yue said hotly. "Nodoka and I will take care of him by ourselves, right, Nodoka?"

"Uh ... right!" said Nodoka, suddenly a bit concerned. Konoka had to be exaggerating when she used hours in the plural like that. She probably just meant an hour and then a bit more of a second hour on top of that, and it'd been, what, probably about half an hour since they started? It couldn't be so difficult as all that.

Right?

* * *

Two and a half hours passed.

"... I ... hate ... you ..." gasped the seriously dehydrated and utterly exhausted form which had been Ayase Yue, hand-like growths reaching up towards Haruna's form, utterly impotently.

"Aw, don't be silly, Yue," Haruna assured her fondly as she picked up the canteen she'd put on her belt, which she was of course not wearing. "It's not in you to hate anyone. You're much too nice of a person for that. You're mad at me, you're annoyed with me, and of course, you are completely and utterly jealous of me - and really, who can blame you, you poor pettanko, you," she added, doing a stretch to give any hypothetical onlookers a nice long look at her unbound breasts. "And there's probably a certain amount of repressed sexual attraction involved, too. But you don't hate me, and I know that, and you know that I know that."

She paused to take a sip of her water while watching Negi pounding Nodoka, who looked to be right on the verge of unconsciousness as she lay on top of Konoka. The healer had joined the melee about an hour or so ago, and was less worn out than either of the other two. Which was a bit like saying that the Atlantic was less vast than the Pacific, really.

"Would you like some water?" Haruna asked Yue.

"... yes ..." the dehydrated girl said, very quietly.

"What's the magic word?"

"... please ..." Yue ground out, eyes burning with the fury of a thousand suns.

Cheerfully, Haruna put the canteen in one of Yue's hands, and watched as it was brought to her mouth. "Don't drink too much too fast, or you'll get sick. Sicker, I guess," she amended helpfully.

"I am going to get you for this," Yue told her, once she'd finished drinking.

"Sure you are," Haruna 'agreed'.

"No, really I am. And you will  _never_  see it coming, and you will  _never_  be able to prove it was me. 'A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser," she quoted, just as Nodoka let out a wail which suggested she'd achieved yet another orgasm.

"That's not someone you should be using as a role model, Yue-Yue," Haruna assured her, patting her gently and oh so patronizingly on the head. "Oh dear, Nodoka seems to have collapsed. Hey, Konoka, is she -"

"She's just asleep," Konoka assured them in a voice which was pretty sleepy in and of itself, as she looked over Nodoka while Negi sat back and panted a bit heavily, with his erection still not subsiding.

"Oh well, then," Haruna said with utterly insincere regret as she rose to her feet "I guess the task of rocking Negi-kun's world has been left to this humble and unworthy person." She smiled in a way that humble and unworthy people probably shouldn't smile. "Now, then -"

"Um, Haruna?" Konoka interjected. "We're on our last glowstick."

Haruna blinked. "We don't have any more glowsticks?"

"We've used them alllll up."

"Um ... can we turn the vault's lights on?"

"Sure, if you don't mind ruining a few hundred thousand dollars worth of light-sensitive documents," Konoka said without a hint of sarcasm.

"Hum. Well. I suppose that we don't technically need the lights to -" Haruna began to say, only to be interrupted by sinister laughter.

Said laughter was emanating from Yue. "Working in the dark? I believe that's utterly contrary to any of the regulations of the Library Exploration Club," she said, turning that last phrase into a song lyric.

"Well, then we can leave this vault and move to a -"

"When there's an unconscious party member, you should return to the surface as soon as possible, unless the mission's agenda requires otherwise, according to the regulations of the -"

"- you suck, Yue," Haruna informed her.

"Yes I did," Yue agreed malevolently. "It was great!"

"Oookay, then," said Konoka, crawling over to where she'd left her clothes to start getting dressed. "I guess we're done for the evening. This was fun, don't you think?"

"Your time will come, Negi-kun!" Haruna promised threateningly.

"So will yours," Yue replied.

"... not like that,  _use_  the macaroni ..." muttered Nodoka.

"I'm the worst teacher ever," Negi muttered.

"More fun than some people should be allowed to have," Konoka said, by now dressed, as she headed over to put some clothes on Nodoka so that the group could start to make their way out of the depths of Library Island.

* * *

As they exited through the main entryway, Konoka (carrying Nodoka in a fireman's carry) paused momentarily as they passed a group of younger library explorers. Her attention, though, was not on them, but rather on the library complex itself. She stared up at it with an odd look on her face.

"Is something the matter?" asked Yue, who was walking unsteadily but managing to walk nonetheless.

"No," Konoka said. "I don't ... think so. I just ... no, never mind, it's nothing."  _Probably,_  she said to no one but herself.

* * *

Nodoka finally recovered enough to walk on her own, just a few minutes before they arrived at the dormitory. Bidding Negi good night - and kissing him fiercely, in Nodoka and Yue's case - the three other members of the library exploration club headed in. Konoka, however, waited until they were gone before she turned to look at Negi with a rather stern expression on her face.

"Okay," she said. "Are you going to wear that hangdog look on your face when we go up to talk to Asuna about what happened? Because I  _can_  tell Grandpa that things aren't working out and have you moved somewhere else, and  _don't_  give me any crap about how that might be for the best because we both know it's  _not_  what you really want."

Negi flushed. "Apparently, I'm not the only one who's more aggressive when I'm like this," he said.

"I'm not aggressive, I'm assertive," Konoka disagreed. "See, I just asserted that I'm assertive. If I was aggressive, I'd try to kick you ass for saying I was aggressive. So. Hangdog expression, yes or no?"

"It's hard for me to avoid having that kind of a look, Konoka, when you realize how badly I'm failing as a teacher."

"Yes, I guess you are at that," Konoka agreed, and her face didn't change even at the obvious hurt on his. "But Negi ... when's the last time you taught a class? When's the last time you graded papers? When did you review a lesson plan? I don't like it anymore than you do, but you've gone beyond being our teacher, even without the sexy times, and you're not going to be able to go back to it. I wish you could, because I get the idea that it really did make you very happy, but, well, I wish my parents were still in love with one another and I wish the girl I love more than anything had way more self-esteem and I wish my best friend wasn't going to sleep for  _a hundred fucking years._ "

Negi, startled by the anger and the pain in her voice, reached for her, but she waved him off.

"There's no point," Konoka continued after a moment to regain her equilibrium, "in wishing for things you cannot make happen with your own power, because there are no higher powers that are just going to make nice things happen to you because you wished for them. If I've learned anything from my time with you, I hope I've learned that. You taught me that, Magister. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Negi replied after a moment. "But -"

"You can't be our teacher anymore. So be our friend, be our partner in battle, be our sex buddy. The point is, you have to let us choose what kind of a relationship we want to have with you. If you don't want to have those kind of relationships, that's  _your_  choice ... but you have to accept that we're going to make the choices we make, not just ... pretend to accept them and then waste time feeling regret for your part in them. Okay? Because that's more hurtful, frankly, than you refusing." Deep breath. "All right, lecture over. Any questions?"

"No sensei," Negi said, with a tiny smile.

"Funnn-eeeyyy," Konoka said with a glower. "Let's go in."

* * *

"And we're ba- Kotaro-kun?"

"Hey, Konoka-san," said Kotaro as he got up from where he was sitting with Setsuna and Asuna, who both had embarassed looks on their faces. "Hey, Negi. I'm living here now."

And then he punched him.

"... why did you do that?" Negi asked after a moment.

"Because somehow, I'm sure that this whole stupid situation is  _your_  fault! And good goddamn that hurt!" Kotaro added as he blew on the bruised knuckles of his hand.

"... and there goes a perfectly good lecture," Konoka muttered. "I'll make some tea and we'll talk it over, all right?"

* * *

That evening, as he made his way to the teacher's dormitory where he - as a teacher - made his residence, unlike certain so-called teachers who resided with their students, Fate Averruncus found himself in a good mood. Considering how his morning had begun, it was sort of surprising, but he was in a good mood nonetheless.

Despite what Miyazaki had called the start of a counterattack, the class had been quiet and obedient. Admittedly, all that he'd done had been to check in on them as they made their preparations for cheering on their classmates in the forthcoming sports festival, since their actual classes were momentarily suspended. But they'd been so engrossed in those preparations that he'd soon concluded that they had neither the time nor the energy to conduct any 'counterattacks' against him.

Really, he'd been a bit foolish to think that they might. These were silly, soppy little girls from a peaceful country, and while they might have demonstrated some courage and skill in the Magical World, that had surely been due to their environment influencing them, rather than any hidden genius or talent. He'd let Miyazaki intimidate him for no good reason. There was nothing to fear but -

And it was while thinking that that Fate casually turned the key in the lock of his door and watched it spring backwards from him as though on a spring, and slowly watched the dozen or so cream pies streaking in his direction. He could easily have dodged them, but the sheer absurdity of the situation left him so bemused that he simply didn't bother.

The pies smashed into him, leaving white cream and red fruit filling - cherry, he thought, without bothering to taste it - all over him and his no-longer immaculate grey suit. Then, adding to injury, a very loud orchestral music he didn't immediately recognize - though a later review of his database would reveal it to be John Williams'  _Imperial March_  - began playing at full volume from the stereo system he'd installed against the possibility that he might want to listen to some music at some point.

It was at that point that doors along the hallway began to open up and people looked out to see what in the world was going on. They didn't stare for very long, though. "Ah, it's the fellow they have teaching 3-A," was said, repeatedly. With the implication that this explained everything.

Fate found himself nodding.

"All right, then," he said, very quietly. "War it is."

**To Be Continued**


	6. Sayo, Haruna, Kotaro/Asuna, Kotaro/Chisame

Makie frowned. She didn't like frowning, even if she supposed that it might be better exercise for the muscles of one's face on account of the whole 'using more muscles to frown than smile" thing. Of course, she'd also heard that was just an old story, and that smiling took more muscles than frowning. (She liked that idea much better, because she  _liked_  smiling more than she liked frowning, so of course it would be nice if it were better for her, too!) However, she'd also heard that the whole thing was rooted in some serious misunderstanding, and that the muscles involved in the tasks of smiling and frowning didn't do the same amount of work and that counting them up didn't really reveal ...

How had she gotten on this tangent, again?

Right. Makie was frowning. Something was  _off_  about her class, today, and she didn't like it. Yesterday, all of them - well, most of all of them - had been working together to chastise Negi-kun for making Yue-chan cry like that, even though Makie had later learned that it hadn't really been Negi-kun's fault and felt just  _awful_  about pummeling him, even if the faces he'd made while it were happening had been just so  _cuuuuute!_  Which excused everything, of course.

But today ... today was different. Even though everyone was working on preparing the banners to cheer each other on in the sports festival, people were acting a bit strangely, today. Take Yue and Nodoka, for example. After yesterday, you'd expect them to be a little different, of course, but they weren't different in the way that Makie would have expected them to be different. Nodoka was smiling and happy and cheerful and - maybe Makie was imagining it, but she thought that Nodoka maybe seemed a tiny bit smug. Meanwhle, Yue looked happy, but, well, a bit embarrassed about being happy. And she kept giving Haruna these  _looks_.

For her part, Haruna seemed a bit tense, like someone who'd been buying popsicles in hopes of getting one with the stick that indicated a freebie only to never get even a single one, in an example that was wholly imaginary and not at all drawn from an episode in Makie's own life. And she was also going to great lengths to ignore the looks that Yue was giving her. Well, that was actually kinda sorta normal - whenever Haruna was in a fight with anyone, she always acted as though she was utterly ignoring that person and treating them as so far beneath her as to be unnoticeable.

Gee, did that mean that she was in a fight with Yue? Makie hoped not, she hated it when friends fell out. Well, they'd probably make up soon enough.

But then there was also the way that Kazumi and Chisame were acting, both kind of nervous - well, Chisame always seemed a little nervous, as though she were terrified that people would realize what a good, kind person she really was (as Makie had realized during the trip to the magical world.) But since Kazumi wasn't a good, kind person - she was nice but she was way too mischievous for her own good - she couldn't be afraid that people would realize it. So what was she afraid people were going to realize.

And that was without going into what was going on with -

As Makie pondered that, the door slid open with a sharp slam, and Fate entered with a look on his face which was a bit more menacing than his usual expression of bored superiority. "Good morning, students," he said with the air of one saying, "You're all going to die."

Everyone stared.

It fell to Makie to say, "Um, good morning, Fate-sensei."

"I had a very interesting experience last night," he said. "Would anyone like to know about my very interesting experience last night? Sasaki-san. Why don't you ask me about my very interesting experience last night?"

Makie did not really want to ask Fate about his very interesting experience last night. Makie did not really want to be on the same continent, nay, the same planet as Fate and his very interesting experience last night. But she managed to wet her suddenly dry mouth, and asked, "Could you tell us about the very interesting experience you had last night, Fate-sensei?"

"Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I'd be glad to do so. When I went to unlock the door of my room, it flung open - subsequent investigations revealed that a spring mechanism had been attached to the opposite side and that unlocking the door allowed the spring to recoil - and a large collection of cherry cream pies were launched in my direction. They hit me, of course, causing a great amount of damage to my suit. Not the suit that I'm wearing, of course, but a different one. I have several in this style. At that point, my stereo system began playing John Williams'  _Imperial March_ , a rather interesting music which I'm given to understand is associated with a fictional galactic empire and the evil-doings thereof. It was a rather amusing prank, really." His tone was calm and not at all accusatory.

Makie blinked. "Um ... amusing?"

"Certainly. The symbolism of red and white food adorning my person is particularly clever, those being the familiar colors of this nation's flag. And the association of the music of a quote-unquote evil empire, which exists only to be overthrown by the protagonists of a series of rather silly movies, is also fairly well-considered. Yes, as pranks go, that was a very admirable one. Whoever did that should certainly be proud of themselves."

"Um ... so then, you're not, ah, angry, Fate-sensei?" Yuna asked.

Fate looked a bit surprised. "I do not become angry. It is an emotion for which I do not have the capacity. No, all that I can feel when considering the lengths that someone went to set up this prank is admiration for a job well done."

Makie imagined that she could hear sighs coming from most of the class.

"Of course, despite my admiration, there is the matter of the serious felonies committed in the process. Breaking and entering, for example, is a serious felony. And there's the misdemeanor of a copyright infringment committed in using that particular music for what amounts to a public performance. Whoever set up this prank has committed a number of felonies and misdemeanors as well, and would certainly be considered to be in a state of moral turpitude.

"As it happens," Fate continued, glancing in Nodoka's direction, "I have recently had cause to study the statutes governing the interactions between teachers and students at this institution, and I discovered something interesting. If a teacher here is aware, or even suspects, that one of his or her students is in a state of moral turpitude, that teacher has the right - almost the responsibility - to refuse to allow that student to participate in extra-curricular activities. Such as the sports festival."

"... wait a minute," Yuna started to say.

"I would greatly prefer not to be suspicious of the entire class," Fate continued, like an avalanche. "However, since there was a declaration of war made to me, yesterday, before all this happened, I have no choice but to be. On the other hand, it is possible that whoever did this acted without the knowledge or consent of her classmates. That's the tragic nature of suspicion, the way that it tarnishes the best and the worst of us equally.

"So, in conclusion - unless the person responsible for arranging this prank comes forward, I will have no choice but to conclude that the entire class is responsible, and inform the Headmaster that all of the members of Class 3-A are in a state of moral turpitude and should not be permitted to participate in the sports festival."

"You -" Yuna started to say something else.

"Sensei, you can't!" Of all people, Akira - quiet, genial Akira - was the one to speak up. "Those of us in the sports clubs have made commitments to our team-mates to participate and -"

"How unfortunate for your teammates that they made commitments with someone so unreliable," Fate interrupted. "I'm waiting for someone to admit responsibility. I'll wait a little longer. I'm still waiting. Well? Last chance. Ah, well, then, I -"

"I did it," said Haruna, standing up and glaring cold death in Fate's direction. "It was me. Only me."

Slowly, Fate turned to look at Haruna. He just looked at her for a few moments, and then, finally, spoke. "Very well. You'll accompany me to the staff room, please." He gestured towards the door.

Haruna waved a jaunty good-bye in the direction of Nodoka and Yue, then proceeded to saunter out of the room. Fate followed her, but paused at the doorway to look back. "I would suggest that all of you carefully consider that your actions will have consequences, and that those consequences will not only affect yourselves, but others, as well," he said. And with that, he shut the door behind him.

"... I really, really,  _really_  hate that guy," Sakurako declared a moment later.

"Unbelievable!" Misa growled. "Just waltzes in here and -"

Chisame interrupted, turning to glare at Misa. "- and isn't it good that he didn't think to ask her -"

* * *

"I suppose that it would do me no good to ask you who your confederates were?" Fate asked blandly as he led Haruna into the staff room. The few other teachers who were there glanced at the odd pair, but didn't ask any questions. The rumors had already informed them about Fate's interesting experience last night.

"Not answering any questions without a lawyer," Haruna replied stoutly as she took a position beside the desk Fate had been assigned.

"I'll forebear from the obvious observation that you watch too much American television," Fate said as he sat down at the desk. "I also forebear from asking because I'm perfectly aware that you wouldn't be able to answer the question."

"Sez you," Haruna replied. She might not know but she could certainly guess, and she thought that her guesses were pretty good.

"Regardless, if you wish to offer yourself as a scapegoat for your classmates' misdeeds, I'd be foolish not to accept. Even if they continue to assail me, eventually they'll run out of willing scapegoats."

"You go right on telling yourself that," Haruna said, smiling grimly.

"Mm. You're suspended for a week, expected to remain in your room. I don't see any point in assigning any busywork, under the circumstances," Fate mused as he reached for the desk drawer, to withdraw the appropriate forms.

Clunk went the drawer.

"Clunk?" repeated Fate, as he looked at it.

He did so just at the right time to take the spring-launched pie - cherry cream, of course - right in the face.

"That one was me, too," Haruna supplied a moment later.

"On second thought, I'd appreciate an essay on the subject of 'it is wrong to humiliate teachers'. Ten thousand words, single-spaced," Fate said, evenly, as red pie filling dripped from his face.

* * *

"Hey!" Misa protested. "Hey, don't give me that, Hasegawa. I didn't ask her to throw herself on the grenade."

"But you weren't exactly rushing to volunteer yourself as the actual mastermind, either," Chisame snapped. "You or your little minions." This said with a glare at Fuuka and Fumika, who understandably bristled.

"Hey!" Fuuka snapped. "We're independent contractors,  _not_  minions!"

Fumika stopped bristling long enough to give her sister a depressed look. "Neechan, that's not the part that should be upsetting you."

"Okay, that's enough," interrupted Madoka. "We can't fight amongst ourselves, that's just what Fate wants us to do. We've got to be united, now. Are we or aren't we?"

There was silence in the classroom, and then a quiet voice spoke up.

"That guy is going down," said Satsuki.

* * *

Of late, Hasegawa Chisame had begun to notice irony a lot more than she had in the past. For example, it was ironic that the wave of self-congratulatory exclamations and statements of unity which followed Satsuki's declaration had distracted everyone else in the class from realizing that Chisame had walked out in disgust. It was also ironic that she was angry at everyone for basically throwing Haruna under the bus when Chisame had been just about to volunteer herself as the scapegoat when Haruna did, and it was also ironic that she was mad because she knew that she would have been just as mad if someone had tried to claim the 'credit'  _after_  she'd put herself out there as the scapegoat.

She was allowed to contradict herself. It was somewhere in the constitution, she was sure.

It was also ironic that she was maybe the only one who was aware that someone else had been right on the verge of volunteering. Chisame found herself briefly wondering why Naba had wanted to do that, and why there had been such a look of disappointment on the other girl's face when Haruna beat her to it. She wondered whether there had been a look like that on her own face.

Probably not. And maybe that first thing wasn't even ironic. Who knew?

But the most ironic thing definitely had to be how she felt about all of this. Despite the fact that she regarded that little jerk with every bit as much fear and loathing as anyone else in the class, she was just as dismayed by the audacity and inanity of the plans the other girls were devising to oppose him. He was an actual, genuine supervillain, for pity's sake, and they were throwing pies at his face.  _Pies_!

They might be the toughest class in this whole crazy school, the ones who'd driven teachers nuts, but they were not equal to the task before them. If push came to shove, he'd say "screw the plan", start blowing petrifying dust all over the place and run off to let the whole freaking magical world collapse. She could see it happening, and it scared the hell out of her.

_When did I start caring?_

_... why did I start caring?_

They were not equal to the task of humbling the little jerk. The only one who'd ever done that was Negi. They needed Negi, and not only was he not here, he'd dragged Kagurazaka - and Yukihiro, not that  _that_ was much of a loss - off onto some other crusade. They needed Negi.  _They_ , very definitely not  _she_. Even if she found herself, in idle moments, thinking about that ... episode ... in the changing room, far more than she liked to do. Even if she could see the same look which she knew that she had on her face when doing so on the faces of Asakura, and Miyazaki, and Ayase, now, too. Damn little Casanova.

And then, just as she was becoming frustrated and angry enough to start growling at herself, she saw him, and all such thoughts were banished from her mind. There he stood, leaning over a railing and watching the activities of the lead-up to the sports festival with genuine, fascinated interest. From time to time, a deep, quiet chuckle escaped from his lips.

Chisame drew in a deep breath, thought of several piercing things that she wanted to say to him at great volume ... then let it out. In silence, she walked over to stand beside him behind the railing, lifting up her elbows to rest them on top of it, and following his gaze.

He'd noticed her at once. She wasn't foolish enough to think she could ever get the drop on him. And, when it darn well pleased him to do so, he half-turned to look at her. "'sup?" he said.

"'sup?" Chisame repeated. "You never call, you never write, and then out of nowhere you're here on  _my_  planet and what do I get from you? 'sup."

"Awwww! You missed me?" Rakan said, leering.

"With every bullet so far."

"Bullets!" laughed the Man You Can Cut and Stab All You Like And It Won't Do A Damn Thing, Dammit. "That's pretty clever, glasses!"

"I have my moments. So, anyway, what are you doing here?"

"Other than annoying and infuriating you, you mean?" he asked, grinning.

"We can take that as read, yeah," Chisame agreed.

"Well, mostly, just playing tourist. It's an interesting place you got here." The hero nodded in the direction of the World Tree. "Don't see too many of those, even on our side. And this is the place where Negi and our Princess got their start in life, so that adds to its allure. You're gonna see a lot of people coming down the pike to visit this place in the years to come."

"As if I needed more of a reason to go elsewhere for high school," groaned Chisame, envisioning a parade of fairy tale people in disguise glasses as she shook her head. "Technically, didn't he get his start at that Meridiana place?"

"Yeah, but that burg doesn't have any kinda night life, if it ain't changed from how it was when Nagi told me about it, so I'm thinking ... ah, that's not important," he said, shaking his head. "Anyway, I'm also keeping an eye on our Princess. Making sure nothing happens to her."

"That's ... awfully responsible of you," she said, frowning.

"Mm-hm," Rakan agreed, avoiding direct eye contact. "Yeah. Gotta make sure nothing bad happens to the princess. Because, you know."

"... I'm abruptly not so sure that I  _do_  know," Chisame replied, frown growing. "Rakan-san, what -"

"Oh, I couldn't possibly talk about it," he said, with a very pious expression on his face. "Eishun, and Takamichi, and Kurt, they all said to me, 'Now, Jack, don't be a gargantuan idiot and go around telling people about how the Princess is going to have to sleep for a hundred years in order to preserve the Magical World. Especially don't tell her classmates. Especially don't tell that particular classmate who's the first girl in years to try and talk back to you, the cute one with glasses. That could cause all sorts of havoc! You don't want to cause havoc, do you, Jack?'" He paused, looked at the void beside him where Chisame had been, and shook his head. "And I said, 'Fellas, let's face it. I can't  _not_  do that,'" he added.

* * *

_You can't be our teacher anymore._

It was funny how he hadn't really faced up to that reality until now. He'd spent days and weeks working on the project, away from the school and his friends here, and yet he'd always somehow thought that he'd come back here eventually. But the truth was, things were going to get harder from here on out, and he'd be drawn further and further away from this place and the people here.

Especially after Asuna was gone.

Negi closed his eyes as he lay on the rooftop of the dormitory, drinking in the sun in the way that he'd seen Evangeline doing from time to time, trying not to think about that. But though he loved his master - despite, and in some cases, because of all of her little quirks - he wasn't equipped to simply ignore the world the way that she could. To do that, he'd need a distraction.

"Negi-sensei?" asked a nervous voice.

 _Here comes one now,_  Negi thought happily, and opened his eyes. "Hello, Sayo-san, what are you doing up here?"

"I came up to look for you, sensei," the ghost told him as she hovered nearby, hands clutched before her in a rather prayerful gesture.

"Well, you have found me," he informed her calmly. "I'll be resuming my nap, now."

"Okay," she agreed ... then blinked. "Wait, what?"

He smiled. "I'm sorry, Sayo-san, I'm in a bit of an odd mood this morning." He supposed that he should feel ashamed of himself for being so flippant when Sayo was clearly a bit upset. On the other hand, Sayo was always a bit upset, to one degree or another. On yet another hand, he supposed that she had a lot to be upset about. He shook his head. "What seems to be the matter?" he asked at last.

"Well, for the most part, I'm worried about Asakura. I think something must have happened to her," Sayo explained. "She's been acting very strangely, as though she has something to hide. And this morning, she didn't remember to take my doll form with her to school, today, so I'm more or less stranded here, and ... sensei?"

Negi had laid back down and closed his eyes. "And here comes the headache again," he murmured.

"Eh?"

Eyes open once more, Negi sat up. "Never mind. Sayo-san, I'm fairly sure that I know what's preoccupying Asakura-san. However, it's something that she discussed with me in confidence." That was  _technically_  true. "I think that if you're really worried about her, you should tell her when you see her next, and she'll probably tell you all about ... the things that I can't tell you about," he concluded somewhat awkwardly.  _And another one of my students will know how badly I've fallen. Well, at least Sayo-san_ can't _get involved with me like that._

"I guess you're right," Sayo said, but she still looked disconsolate. "It's just ... a few days ago, Asakura said that she was going to take me out to do some research about whatever it was that happened to me, when I ... well, you know. Died." She said the word very quietly, as though they involved a terrible crime that she'd committed, instead of - as they now suspected - one of which she'd been the victim.

"And you're concerned that she's forgotten that promise?" Negi asked, frowning.

"Oh, no!" Sayo quickly denied. "She'd never do that. But ... well, with the festival, and this stuff that you know about and can't tell me about, maybe she's gotten too busy to -"

Abruptly, Negi thumped his hand against the ground. "Sayo-san," he said, cutting her off. "I'm going to help you with that."

"Ehhhhh?" the ghost gasped. "But, sensei, surely you're too busy with -"

"Nope," he said. "I'm never too busy to help my students, when they really need it. How can I possibly do things to make the whole magical world a better place if I'm worrying about any of you? So I should help you when I can, and I can help you, right now." He started to stand up, brushing off his legs as he did. "Where you planning on heading to do this research?"

"Ah, well, Asakura thought that there might be some information on Library Island," she told him, starting to smile warmly.

And just like that his enthusiasm dimmed. "Ah. Library Island. That's ... um. Maybe we would do well to wait until a member of the Library Exploration Club is available to help us out then, and -"

"I have an astounding coincidence to report," said Haruna as she stood in the rooftop access, smiling maniacally.

* * *

"You should just go and apologize," Asuna advised, not bothering to look up from the history text she'd been asked to read.

Kotaro, who was slumped in front of the dorm room's window looking out with a surly expression, first turned to glare at her, then froze when he realized something a bit odd. "How'd you know what I was thinking?"

"Woot!" Asuna proclaimed, still not looking up as she punched the air. "Finally got that one mastered. I'm picking up all kinds of little tricks like that lately. Royal Magic stuff, I guess. Anyway, it's true however I got it, isn't it?"

"Actually, no, it ain't true! Apologizing was what got me into this whole mess!"

"Well, technically, I think having sex with Chizuru-san was what got you into the mess." Asuna replied. Honestly, she wanted to quiz him about what that had been like, what Chizuru had liked. It'd be useful for when she persuaded Negi to go after the girl.

"No, that was over, this is a separate mess!" Kotaro retorted.

"How can it be the a separate mess when your apology was about -"

"It was a different thing!"

She found herself starting to get annoyed. "No, it wasn't."

"It was a different thing!" insisted Kotaro.

"No, it was the same damn thing!" Asuna paused, took a deep breath. "Look, while I think you need to pay a little more attention to time, place and circumstances, this whole situation is completely solvable. You should just go talk to Natsumi-san, politely. That's what grown-ups do, and -"

There was a furious pounding on the door. "Kagurazaka! Open the fucking door right the hell now or I swear I'm going to kick it down!" yelled a female voice on the other side.

Asuna coughed.

"No, do go on," Kotaro said snidely.

All affronted dignity, Asuna rose from where she was sitting and walked over to the door, which was still being pounded on when she arrived. The pounding only stopped when she opened it. "Good afternoon, Chisame-san," said Asuna politely, and then promptly caught the punch which was flung at her face. "To what do we owe this visit?" she asked as she held the other girl's fist in her own hand.

"You fucking sanctimonious bitch!" Chisame shouted. "' _if_  there's ever a time'?  **IF**? When you already know that there's going to be a time like that coming up real damn soon? Where the hell do you get off?"

"Won't you come in?" Asuna said, as politely as one can when one is speaking through clenched teeth.

* * *

"A suspension?" Negi asked as he tromped down the stairs ahead of Haruna and Sayo, who was drifting along beside the other girl. "He actually suspended you?"

"Gave me paperwork and everything," Haruna confirmed.

"And he seriously thinks he can just do that?" Negi asked, pausing in the landing to turn around and actually look at her. He was Not Happy.

Haruna spread her hands before her. "I guess that he does, because that's what he did. And there were other teachers in the staff room, and they all must have heard him saying the word, but none of them objected."

Negi shook his head angrily. "Well, I think this whole situation has  _officially_  gone too far. You girls shouldn't be provoking him like that, but he shouldn't be responding this way, either. I'm going to have to have a little chat with Fate."

"By chat do you mean fist-fight that ends in another awesome handshake, because I know some people who'd pay good money to watch that," Haruna said.

"No, Haruna-san, we're just going to talk," he assured her. Of course, he was not even close to being sure that it was going to end that way, but he felt obligated to set a good example.

"I guess that this is going to keep you from doing that investigation, then," Sayo said, doing her best to avoid sounding upset about that. Her best ... wasn't, unfortunately.

Negi glanced at her, then took a deep breath. "No," he said firmly. "No, Fate will keep. And as for Haruna's suspension, if a teacher - which I still am - asks her to accompany him, I don't think she can be faulted for breaking the terms of her suspension."

"Wow, that's really sneaky, sensei," Haruna said approvingly.  _Very_  approvingly.

"Well, anyway," Negi said, abruptly uncomfortable. Which was ridiculous, of course. Surely not even Haruna would try to engage in sexual activities while someone as innocent as Sayo was present. Surely not! "Let's first go pick up Sayo-san's doll so that she can come with us. And we might want to ask Asuna to accompany us, too, just in case we run into something very dangerous on the way, like that dragon."  _Or Haruna,_  an unworthy thought occurred to him as he was speaking.

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea," said Haruna, but she didn't look too happy about it. "Let's -"

" _Where do I get off?_ " roared a voice from the door to a certain room as they approached it. " _Where do you get off, coming here, trying to hit me, and then yelling at me -_ "

" _Oh, like I could hit you if you didn't want me to hit you, I've learned my lesson on that score!_ " yelled another voice, one not often associated with that particular room. " _And that doesn't have anything to do with -_ "

" _Oy, oy!_ " cried Kotaro's voice. " _What the heck are you two screwy dames yelling about -_ "

" _Stick it, puppy!_ " the two girls' voices chorused.

"... on second thought," Haruna started to say.

Yep, here came the headache, right on schedule. "I, I think Asuna might be a bit busy with something else," Negi agreed. "Let's not disturb her, then, let's just get the doll and be on our way." It was probably for the best, now that he thought about it. Asuna might not only have taken Haruna's side, she'd have encouraged him to find a way to do it with Sayo.

Which was impossible, of course.

* * *

"So let me get this straight," Kotaro asked, a few moments later. "You're going to be put to sleep -"

"Not euphemistically!" Asuna interrupted as she held Chisame in a headlock.

"I  _got_  that after you explained it to me the  _second_  time," the boy retorted. "Anyway, you're going to be put to sleep for a hundred years, and you haven't told anybody outside of Konoka-nesan, Setsuna-san and Pineapple Head - and she only found out 'cuz she was eavesdropping and promised not to tell anyone either. Is that right?"

"Yes," Asuna admitted, containing Chisame's struggles easily. "That's all there is."

"You are a total cunt."

Asuna was so startled by this quietly voiced declaration from Kotaro that her grip on Chisame loosened enough for the other girl to slide free. However, Chisame was just as startled, and didn't resume her attacks on Asuna once she was free. (Well, the fact that everything she'd thrown at Asuna had been completely no-selled probably influenced her decision a little, but the surprise was the major factor.)

"Excuse me?" Asuna asked after a moment to get over the shock.

"You're going to abandon all your friends without even telling them anything?" Kotaro asked, clearly not expecting an answer. "You're gonna just go off and never tell them goodbye or nothing?" He turned his gaze from Asuna to Chisame. "Damn, lady, I thought you were just pitching a fit for no reason like usual, but this is something that should piss somebody off."

"Thanks," Chisame said, in the least thankful tone imaginable.

"It's not -" Asuna tried to interject.

"You're not even gonna tell crazy aunt iinchou?" Kotaro demanded.

"She's -"

"She  _loves_  you!" the boy snapped.

Asuna recoiled. "No she do-"

"You're all she friggin' talks about, some days!" he cut her off.

"When Rainyday brought her into the magical world," Chisame said, her voice just about brimming with fury, "and she asked me what was going on, when I told her about Negi's troubles, she was freaking out, but when I told her about  _you_ , she stopped freaking out and got scary focused! Yeah, I'd say the twerp is right about that!"

"Yeah!" Beat. "Hey,  _twerp_?"

"Don't use the c-word in my hearing ever again, and you'll get upgraded to brat."

"Look," Asuna said, taking advantage of their momentary focus on each other to try and regain control of the conversation. "This is a complicated situation."

"Like fuck it is!" Kotaro growled. "Can I use  _that_  word, your grace?"

"Do not push me right now," Chisame growled right back. "It's complicated?" she snapped at Asuna. "And I suppose the fact that you were just going to disappear when the rest of us were celebrating our graduation was your idea of  _simple_? What the hell did you think that we were going to be told, anyway?"

"That I'd died!" Asuna shrieked, grabbing her twin-tails and yanking them in frustration.

Her two interlocutors stared at her in horrified disbelief.

"Or that I'd had some kind of whirlwind romance with a prince from the magical world and run off to get married!" she carried on. "Or finally run off in heartbreak over - that's not important, dammit! What matters is that it's a choice between my life and the lives of  _billions_  of people over there! What the hell am I supposed to do, tell them that their lives don't count?"

"What the hell are you supposed to do?" Chisame asked, very quietly, after a moment. "You're supposed to find a third option. That's what the hell you're supposed to do. Have you even  _tried_  that?"

"Yes," Asuna promptly replied. "Yes, we  _have_  looked for a third option, thanks for asking. Negi came up with the seed of the plan in a few minutes. He worked out the details inside of a week. And then he spent another week looking for ways to make his plan work without doing that to me ... before I told him to stop, and just focus on making sure that the rest of the plan was going to work."

"You gave up," Kotaro said.

Asuna spared him a glance. "Yes. I gave up. Negi hasn't, he still thinks he can find a workaround, but ..." She trailed off, then let out a sad laugh. "It makes sense, if you think about it. For hundreds of years, I slumbered at the heart of the world, and then the Entheofushias found a way to wake me up and use me for their own ends, and that's when it all started to go wrong. I am the original sin. Then and -"

"Bullshit!" Chisame angrily interrupted. "Didn't you hear me at all when we were trying to wake you -"

"'You are an idiot,'" Asuna interrupted right back, eyes closed. "'But I've always had faith that you were a normal and realistic person, that you never needed any stupid traits like being a magical princess. Don't you give in to stuff like this!'" Her eyes opened. "You're a very loud and opinionated person, you know. I never realized that about you until then."

Chisame choked on her reply.

"But I  _am_  a magical princess," Asuna continued. "And you -" Her eyes dilated to a degree almost frightening. "You have no idea ... I have borne babies. I have watched my children grow to adulthood. I have watched them gathering around my deathbed. I have seen them cut down in their youth. I have murdered them myself. I have killed babies. I have slaughtered whole villages, towns,  _cities_  -" Asuna drew in a deep breath, almost collapsing in on herself. "I am not just a magical princess," she almost whispered. "My mind touches and embraces all the souls within that world. In a sense,  _I am the magical world._ "

Chisame, appalled, stood there and stared at the girl in jeans and a t-shirt who'd just made that sonorous proclamation, and, after a moment, found that she could only do one thing.

So she laughed.

Asuna blinked as Chisame began giggling, but then her own lips turned up in a reluctant smile as well. "It's kinda crazy, isn't it?" she asked, chuckling a bit. And then more than a bit.

"Kinda?" Chisame demanded, before descending again into helpless, near hysterical laughter, in which Asuna promptly joined her.

Kotaro, who had found the previous conversation so far above himself, just stared at the two laughing girls in horror. "You're both nuts," he declared.

It didn't help. Quite the contrary, actually. And now he had the awful feeling that the two of them were laughing at  _him_ , in part. He sat and he watched and he fumed.

Eventually, though, the laughter died down, and Chisame reached up to remove her glasses so as to wipe the tears that she'd been shedding the whole while. "What are we going to do?" she asked, sounding so weak and helpless.

"Love him," Asuna answered promptly. "When I'm gone, love him, like I asked you to do." Her sad smile went a little naughty. "You've already got some practice at that, y'know."

"I don't love - okay, so,  _technically_ , I guess you could say that I, sort of,  _physically_  loved -" Chisame started to object.

"Oh, come on!" Kotaro finally spoke up, now  _really_  irritated. "Her, too?"

"Yep, and 'Pineapple Head', and Bookstore, and the one you call Chibisuke, too," Asuna informed him, blandly.

Kotaro gaped. "Holy shit. Ho-lee shiiiiit." He shook his head. "Man, Natsumi-neechan should definitely forgive me."

"Why's she mad at the twerp?" Chisame asked, trying to regain some standing in the conversation.

"He fucked Chizuru."

"You are a total dick," Chisame said, abruptly glaring at Kotaro.

"Hey!" he yelped.

"Yeah, and the expectation that Natsumi-chan should forgive him just because he's not done as bad as somebody else?" Asuna said. "Not very cool. Maybe we ought to make it even harder for him to ask for her generous forgiveness."

"Wha-"

"And after all, it'll be good practice for you, for when the growth pill finally wears off and you have to have sex with Negi the normal way, too," she added to Chisame as she started to pull off her shirt.

"I think I'll be on my way now!" Kotaro declared, turning towards the closed window and quickly calculating how much damage he was going to take smashing his way through it and dropping to the ground several floors below.  _Worth it!_

"SIT," Asuna said.

"Dammit!" Kotaro cried as he did so.

Chisame finally found her voice. "Wait a second," she gasped, as Asuna began rolling down her jeans. "I never said that I was going to - stop looking at me with that skeptical expression, it's weird in a person wearing nothing but bra and panties!"

"Well, since they're going to come off anyway," Asuna answered blithely as she reached for the straps of her bra.

"That's not what I - shit, you went and did it all the same!" Chisame howled her protest. "Look, I don't want to have sex with either of you!"

"Well, then, you can leave, or you can stay and watch," Asuna said quite reasonably, as she folded the bra and set it down.

"I'm not some damned voyeur!"

Asuna noted that the option of leaving had been dismissed, but cleverly chose not to mention. "No, from what I understand, you're more of an exhibitionist." She pressed on, overriding Chisame's squawk of outrage. "I do think that being with me will be good practice for when you're finally with Chachamaru."

"Who says that I'm going to be with -" Chisame started to shriek.

"Wait, her and Mecha-neechan?" Kotaro asked from where he was obediently and nervously sitting on the floor. "Man, I thought I was kidding, but there really  _is_  something in the water here, isn't there?"

"She loves you," Asuna said angrily, ignoring the boy for a moment. "I talked to her, after we did it with Eva -"

"You did what with  _who_?" Kotaro asked, this time genuinely appalled.

She continued to ignore him. "- and I asked her if she was upset about Negi and her mistress doing stuff, and she said that just like she'd told him after he was with you, she was happy that the people she loved were happy together. So yeah. She loves you. Chew on that." She turned her attention away from the stunned girl to Kotaro, then dropped down to her knees in front of him.

"Okay," she said. "Right now, you're thinking that you don't want to have sex with me and that you'd really rather be just about anywhere else, right?"

"Is that permission to leave?" Kotaro asked haplessly.

"No, don't be ridiculous. Kotaro-kun, let's make a bet, okay? I bet that I can tempt you to  _want_  to have sex with me, using just a few brief sentences. If I'm wrong, you can run off and do whatever you like. But if I'm right, you'll do it, okay?"

"This is a screwy bet -" he started to say.

"Backing down from a challenge?"

"- but I never back down from a challenge!" the boy quickly snapped.

"Right," said Asuna, then took a deep breath before aiming her most sensual expression at the boy. "You're still mad at Negi, right? You still want to show him up? Wouldn't this be a good way to do that?"

Kotaro stared at her. "Ah, maaaaaan," he said, after a moment. And then he pounced on her.

Asuna allowed him to push her back on to the floor, giggling faintly as his mouth instinctively found its way to her breasts and began licking and suckling at her teats. Clearly, though, he was going to need some help, and so she started to pull his jacket off as he began to lick down her stomach to where her panties were her only garment. As she got the jacket off, his freed hands went to work on getting the panties off as well, though they were only up around her knees by the time that the scents proved too tempting for her to ignore.

"Ah!" she gasped as he began to lick at her down there, her hands reaching out to run through the hair that was so different from Negi's.

Meanwhile, Chisame had collapsed to her own knees as she watched the two of them just go at it with nary a thought of the fact that she was present and watching them. She couldn't believe that anyone could possibly be so ... shameless.

Then again, reflecting on what she'd already known about Kagurazaka before all this, and what she'd just found out ("I've killed babies" - SHEESH!) it wasn't all that surprising that the girl was somewhat shame-deficient. And the twerp was an idiot hero, which was probably why Negi kept hanging around him - it was like being with his father, or with Rakan.

 _Uhhhhn?_  Chisame found herself thinking as that thought went through her head, for no reason she could readily understand.

"Get your pants down," Asuna said softly, between pants of her own. "Get your pants dowwwwn-nuh-nuh-nuh!" That repetition came just as he figured out that her clit was significant to this process.

Kotaro's left hand, until that point gripping the outside of Asuna's thigh as it wrapped around his neck. went down to fiddle with his belt buckle. The operation thus undertaken would normally require two hands to complete, but Kotaro's considerable manual dexterity let him get it done with only one. His pants came open and something came out.

"Stand up, stand up partways so I can see it," Asuna commanded, spreading her knees further so that he could do so. "Mmm, bigger than Negi's -" she started to say.

"What the crap are you talking about?" Chisame butted in.

"Bigger than Negi's when he's normal is what I am delicately trying to say," Asuna bit out while glaring at her. Eyes back to Kotaro, she continued in a soothing tone. "Aw, did the scary big sister put you off your game?"

"Since when am I the -"

"No, no," Kotaro protested. "I'm just, I, give me a minute, it'll get up again, definitely -"

"Or we could do this," she interrupted as she sat up a bit, then grabbed his flagging staff and stroking it  _twice_.

Quoth Kotaro, "Glghghl."

"Bit less than a minute, wouldn't you say?" she directed over her shoulder at Chisame. "Now give it to me. Give it to me hard and fast and -"

He half-stumbled, half-leapt forward onto and into her, turning her words to a hiss. "I can do accurate, too, y'know," Kotaro growled up towards. "I ain't just rough."

"But rough is what I want," Asuna replied through gritted teeth. "Fucking pound me, you  _twerp_."

With an outright snarl, he began to do so.

"Ah, yeah," Asuna said in a voice that was almost a hiss. "Yeah, that's it. Pound me, pound up into my tight warm cunny." Her legs lifted from where they'd been lazing alongside Kotaro's pistoning hips to cross behind his buttocks as though holding him in place. "I'm tighter than Chizuru, riiiiight?"

"Uh," Kotaro replied, momentarily pausing as, once again, his instincts told him that the correct answer would not be a welcome one. "Well, it was all, all so confusing and -"

But perhaps an answer hadn't been what she was after, only the moment of hesitation itself. "Uh-huh," she gasped, then rolled over so that she was astride him and pulled his torso up into a tight embrace against her own. Her hips began to jerk with dizzying frequency. "Ah, now that's it. That's it," she repeated.

"Ahhuhhh," Kotaro almost wailed in response to the sensations her jerking hips were drawing up out of his groin. "I'm, Asuna-san, I'm gonna -"

"What?" Asuna said, eyes open only to slits in a way that was strangely  _unlike_  the way that Kaede did the same thing. "Whaaaaat? Are you about to come? Are you going to blow jizz all the way up into  _your best friend's girl_? Is that it? You've got to saaaayyyy these things!"

"Ruh-ruh-rival!" he managed to gasp out before he climaxed. "Rival," he repeated as he nuzzled up against her breaasts, mouth finding its way onto one of her nipples.

"Uh-huh," Asuna said, smiling down at him as her hands came up to pet his head. Her hips kept moving, but much more slowly, now. "Anything you say, little boy. Not so little, I guess, because I can already feel you getting hard again - oh, don't start moaning and groaning now - but someone else deserves a turn with you, I think." She turned to smile sensuously at Chisame.

Chisame blinked. "I, I - what? I never said I wanted a turn with -"

"That'd be a lot more convincing coming from someone who wasn't jilling herself off," Asuna blandly informed her.

That was when Chisame realized why her skirt was hiked up around her waist, where one of her hands had gone, to say nothing of what it was doing. "Damn fugue state!" she swore.

"Hu-uh?" Kotaro grunted polysyllabically as he turned to blearily stare at her.

So as not to be distracted by what was going on in front of her, Chisame reached up with her  _other_  hand to remove her glasses, without which she couldn't see, even if she might allegedly have spent all sorts of time running around without them which had only happened because shut up. "Okay," she said. "Now, look, I might have gotten a little bit excited just now, but I didn't -"

"Holy shit!" said Kotaro. "You're that Chiu girl Negi was telling me about and showing me all those pictures of -"

Chisame froze.

"- I never saw you without your glasses or out of costume or not being a loli before, so I never figured it out until now -" he continued heedlessly.

The thaw commenced.

"- but really, it's definitely you, I mean her, I mean, wow, who'd have thought you were so good looking without your glasses -"

"RAAAAARGHH!" Chisame declared as she stood up and tore off her blouse.

Kotaro yelped in genuine shock, just before the infuriated young woman, her skirt still hiked up around her hips, stormed over to him, yanked her panties to the side and slammed her crotch into his face.

"Lick me you twerp!" she snapped.

"Whurgh?" Kotaro inquired.

"I said, lick me! You wanted Chiu, right? Chiu was in allll your dirty little fantasies! Well here I am, now lick me, you damned wannabe idiot hero! Yeah, that's right, I said  _wannabe_! A real idiot hero would be licking me by naaowww! Oh, you think that's cute, biting, huh? Yeah, I bet you think that's real cute, and - what the ffffuhhhh!"

With some difficulty, Chisame managed to twist enough to get a reasonable enough view of her own backside, sufficient to inform her that an orange haired head was pressed up against the part of it that she couldn't ever see without the benefit of the full-length mirror she had back in her room.

"What're you doing!" she gasped.

Asuna pulled back and smirked up at her. "It's not really surprising that you're such a tight-ass, Chisame _-chan_ ," she purred. "But that just makes it all the better!" And then she resumed her earlier endeavors.

Chisame gaped. "You, you've got to be kidding, you can't be - ahhh! But, but, it's  _dirty_  and -"

"Mmmmm!" Asuna responded.

This was too much, it was all so, so purient! It was as disturbing and twisted as ... as having sex with a teenaged boy who was really only ten in a store's dressing room. Or as bringing oneself shrieking to orgasm at the thought of thousands of people looking at suggestive photographs of oneself. Or as masturbating to faint memories of an enormous  _thing_  between the legs of an old man ...

Hasegawa Chisame shrieked her climax to the heavens as she tried to understand how Asuna could possibly know her so well.

"Damn," Kotaro muttered as, with some difficulty, he pulled out of the crazy lady's grip and tried to wipe his mouth clean of her juices.

"Hmmm?" Chisame blinked, looked down at him. "Uh? Oh.  _You_  think you're done, don't you? You think just because you gave me a little bit of satisfaction, that it's all over, don't you?"

"I honestly had not given it much thought," Kotaro answered. "Is it?"

Chisame shook her head.

"Figures," he muttered.

"Come on down here, Chisame-chan, and we can play with this thing," Asuna offered in between licks at the boy's erection.

The urge to tell her to stop calling her Chisame-chan almost overpowered the sexual frenzy into which Chisame had once again fallen, but she quickly dropped down to join her.

* * *

"Hmmm," Asuna said a short while later, poking the boy's member with a finger. "Doesn't have Negi's endurance, either, I guess."

Kotaro would probably have objected to that, but he was honestly well past understanding anything that he heard, and, in fact, was gradually slipping down into the black gulfs of unconsciousness. That was probably for the best, really.

Chisame, in particular, found herself envying him his serenity. "... what the hell did I just do?" she asked, rubbing the spending that had ended up on her face, as though it would stain.

Asuna rolled her eyes. "And here comes the denial of reality."

"I'm not in denial of - nnngghhh!" Chisame broke off in a growl. "That is so annoying!"

"Sorry," Asuna replied, manifestly not sorry, as she pulled Kotaro's briefs back up and arranged him so he could sleep a little more comfortably, petting his head once more as she did so.

Watching this in almost a daze, Chisame shook her head. "What was the point of all this?"

"Does it have to have a point?" the other girl asked back. "If it does, why don't you accept the point that I gave you at the start of this?"

"Because I don't believe it. Even if I did believe that you wanted to train me for when Negi goes back to being the annoying little ... person that he was before all this zaniness started -"

"You'd actually have to go way back to the start of his teaching career, if you want to be that general," Asuna told her dryly.

"- then what you did isn't consonant with that goal, is what I was trying to say!" Chisame concluded. "Also, stick it."

"Stick it," Asuna muttered. "That's a good one. I'll have to use it." She got up from where she was crouching on the floor, walking over to the window and gazing out of it. "It's a beautiful day, don't you think?"

Chisame, glasses restored, stared at her.

"I don't have a lot of beautiful days left. A few hundred, at most. And ... you know, I want to experience everything.  _Everything._  I know I can't, but I want to experience so much more than I have in the last nine years. Maybe, if I do that, then the little bit that's me won't drown in the vast ocean that is her and all her borrowed memories," she murmured. "Maybe I'll be real."

She turned back to look at Chisame, and smiled. "And the sex isn't  _so_  bad."

Chisame slowly shook her head. "And what about -"

"What about poor Negi?" Asuna answered. "Do you think it'll hurt him, to know that I'm screwing around behind his back? Do you think he'll feel pain and sorrow?" A deep breath. "Do you think if he feels that, he won't miss me so much in all those years to come?"

"No," Chisame promptly answered.

"Oh well," Asuna replied with a shrug. "Now, I believe that I mentioned something about teaching you how to be with Chachamaru." She hopped up onto the window sill and spread her legs. "Come here and give us a kiss, Chisame-chan."

* * *

"It's times like this that I wish the concept of the yearbook existed in Japan," Negi mused as he leafed through the albums of class rosters.

"Well, technically, it does, but the time in question was a bit before instant photography, so it's not so surprising that we haven't been able to find any photographs of Sayo-chan from back then," Haruna replied. "There would have been one of her class on their class trip, but -"

"I don't even remember whether I went on a class trip," Sayo affirmed as she brought over another pile of albums, having possessed her doll and then started operating a golem-Sayo that Haruna had drawn. "I know that I didn't graduate, so there wouldn't be a graduation photo, either. And of course I can't remember being photographed." She sighed. "Or much of anything. But there is a photograph of me in one of these, Asakura found it and showed it to me. I'm sorry for not making a note of which one it was, I should've -!"

"There's no way you could have thought you'd have to find it again without her help," Negi said soothingly. "Don't worry, we'll find it." He smiled at her, willing her to be calm.

It didn't seem to work; Sayo's golem actually flushed. "Uh, yes, yes, of course. I'll, I'll go get more albums, then." She proceeded to dash off to do so.

Haruna and Negi waited a moment.

Sayo came back, set down the ones she'd already brought, and dashed off again.

"Why did you make a golem that can blush?" Negi asked Haruna, once he thought Sayo was out of earshot.

"Wouldn't it just blow your mind if I said that I didn't?" she asked. "Casanova."

"I'm  _not_  -"

"Uh-huh. Suuure. Anything you say, enemy of all women." She shook her head, becoming serious abruptly. "It's kind of weird, though. I've never looked at anthologies from this far back, but in modern ones, if someone in a class passed away in the course of the school year, there'd normally be  _some_  mention. An in memoriam photo, maybe even a sketch or a poem. There should've been something like that for her, shouldn't there?"

"There should," Negi said hesitantly. "But on the other hand ... there may have been a fair amount of official censorship involved." He used a rather delicate phrasing.

Haruna raised an eyebrow. "You don't have to be so delicate, you know. Negi, I'm a bisexual girl who is never ever going to be content to stay in the kitchen and be a mother to my husband and children. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone in our class who has fewer sympathies for the early Showa period than me." She paused. "They had snazzy uniforms, admittedly, but they got most of those from the Taisho, so -"

"Well, I'm just trying to be polite."

"We'd all be a lot happier if you were a lot less polite, y'know?"

Negi rubbed his head and elected not to answer that.

"More albums," Sayo announced as she stumbled towards the desk under the burden of several dozen albums. Negi, appalled, got up to help her with them.

"... and of course, just as that happens, I do believe we've found our girl!" Haruna announced, gazing at the page of the one already in front of her. Negi and Sayo exchanged a startled look, set the albums down on the table, and came over to lean over her shoulders.

"Yes, that's definitely me," Sayo agreed after a moment. "This would have been my, I guess my first year at school ... in 1938?" She frowned. "That doesn't seem right. I thought I died in 1940, in my second year?"

"That's what the note on the class register implied, but ... you know, maybe we've been reading this wrong, the whole time. Maybe the first year on that note was when you ... for lack of a better term, were transferred to our classroom, and what happened to you happened in the previous year," Negi speculated.

"You think so?" Sayo asked dubiously.

"At this stage, it's a reasonable hypothesis. I guess we're going to have to go looking through old newspapers to check."

Haruna had flipped through the rest of the photo album, and was now staring at one page in particular. "You know ... I think we might not have to do that after all," she said, sounding haunted.

Negi, following her gaze, saw that she was staring intently at a strange alphanumeric code - D34FV723J9 - written in white on the black lining of the album. "What is that?" he asked.

"Ah ... well, the thing is ... that expression is in the formula that the Library Exploration Club uses to record locations," Haruna explained. "I don't ... as far as I know, the club only got started after the war, so this shouldn't even be here -"

"Unless it was a later addition," Negi guessed quickly. "Could there be a connection?"

"Well, yeah, there could be a connection, of course there could, but there's no way of knowing, just from this whether there is or not," Haruna answered. "But you didn't let me to get to the weird part. I recognized this location, because it's in my own journals. I've been there, I've discovered what's odd about that area."

"Okay," Negi said, after exchanging glances with Sayo, who looked as mystified as ever. "What would that be, then?"

"Well, it's kind of a long story, so, if we're going to go there," she said, pushing away from the table and standing up, "it might be simpler to tell you as we go."

"... shouldn't we put these albums away?" Sayo asked.

"Uh, a page will probably take care of that, eventually," Haruna replied, distractedly. Her usual smirk was utterly absent; she looked, and sounded, just a bit dazed and confused.

"Well, you're the explorer among us. Um, is the way there trapped?" Negi asked, expecting the worst.

"What? Oh. No, actually, no, it's in the publicly accessible areas of the building, that's ... that's actually a part of the story."

* * *

"You see," Haruna said, a short while later, as she led them down a hallway. "I joined the Library Exploration Club in my first year of middle school, the first year that they allow students to join. And, on ... I think it was my second or third expedition ... no, no, it had to be the second, because Sakurako left the club to go play lacrosse after that -"

"Sakurako-san was in the Library Exploration Club?" Negi asked.

"Yeah, until she quit to go chase around a ball with a stick, that's what I was saying. Anyway, she was there, and Konoka was there, and I was there, and Yue and Nodoka were on a different expedition for whatever reason. At the time I thought they might be sneaking off to make out, but that was obviously wrong."

"Well, obviously!" Sayo said.

Haruna paused, turned to give Sayo a look, and coughed. "Riiight. Anyway, we were starting off from ... well, here," she said, as they arrived in a large foyer, with several exits carefully marked with 'Staff Only, Do Not Enter Without Authorization' signs, along with portraits of a few of the previous headmasters of Mahora Academy - not many, given the length of time in which Konoemon had held onto the role, but a few.

"And ... I don't even remember how she did it, but somehow, Sakurako ..." Haruna trailed off, shook her head. "I'd probably better just show you. Okay. From the only public entrance - over there," she gestured. "The facing wall is A. To the right, we have B. To the left, we have C. And the floor -" Tap, tap, went her foot. "- is D. Thirty-four steps, toe-to-hee, across the floor from the public entrance, along the heading revealed by the next part of the code, brings us to ... this portrait - who is, interestingly, of the headmaster who was running the place when Sayo was a student here, not that I knew that at the time."

"I don't know that now," Sayo said in a way meant to be comforting.

"Right. And J9 is a signal to examine the sconce that runs under the portrait, and -"

The click was almost deafening, and the opening of the rather large and startlingly well-concealed trap door in the foyer's corner threw up a great deal of dust.

"- that button opens up Bypass 12, running down into Level 10 territory," Haruna explained. "All the way to a certain vault we probably weren't supposed to find for quite some time."

Negi blinked. "Wait ... I think Konoka might have mentioned this. A vault that contains um, the headmaster's love letters?"

"Nope, it doesn't contain those, because we've never been there and don't know about it or them," Haruna clarified.

"Ahhhhh," said Negi, nodding his understanding.

"Huh?" asked Sayo.

"So what exactly is a bypass?" Negi asked as he peered down the newly exposed spiral staircase that led down into stygian darkness.

"It's pretty much what the name says, a shortcut - except usually only short by comparison - through the library's structure to a given location. They're high school-level explorer secrets, usually used only in an emergency, like if someone's hurt down there and the rescuers need to get to them in a hurry. Or for other purposes - I'm pretty sure that the initiation for the high school club is finding the bypass that leads down to Vault XX, where the exploration journals of the club are supposed to be archived." Haruna shook her head. "But I'm getting off topic. This is the only bypass that I actually know about, and I'm not supposed to know about it."

"Well, then, I suppose we should get on with the business of delving!" Negi said cheerfully, as he started down the stairs. "After all, there probably aren't any traps, if it's a short cut."

"Um, actually -"

TWANG.

"- there's traps, but they're kiddy-level, since if you've found the bypass you're assumed to be at a certain level of competence at trapfinding," Haruna explained.

"Negi-sensei!" Sayo gasped.

Calmly, Negi pushed the arrow out of his abdomen and tossed it into the depths. "So I see," he said. "I'm fine, Sayo-san, no harm done. And I will just have to be very careful from now on."  _Kiddy level?_  he protested inwardly.  _ **Kiddy level?**_

Despite Haruna's gentle suggestion that she should perhaps take the lead, Negi proceeded to walk down the stairs ahead of the two girls, on the theory that if anything happened he had the best chance of negating it or taking it on the chin. Haruna would have preferred to just make sure that everyone avoided the traps, but she settled for pointing them out when she had to do so.

"So, is any of this bringing back memories?" she asked Sayo a few minutes into their climb.

Sayo shook her head. "Not a one. Well ... I  _think_  I remember visiting this library at least once, when I was alive, but I definitely can't recall ever going this deep into it. I was scared enough of the parts that I did visit."

"Understandable," Haruna agreed. "Uh, Negi, that step is trapped to set off a flamethrower, you might want to step over it."

"Thank you," Negi said dryly.  _Flamethrower?_

"But now that I'm here, this is actually sort of fun, isn't it?" Sayo asked, smiling broadly.

 _... I'm the only sane man. How can someone as messed up as I am be the only sane man?_  Negi wondered frustratedly.

"Okay, we're coming up on a trap that we might actually  _want_  to set off," Haruna announced. "It turns the staircase into a slide, and there's a cushion at the bottom. It's a lot easier than walking all this way -"

"I'm not tired, Sayo doesn't get tired, and if you get tired, I'll carry you the rest of the way," Negi interrupted, shaking his head. "I'm not giving whatever sadistic psychopath designed these things the satisfaction of knowing that I deliberately set any of his or her little games."

"Okay, then you'll want to avoid that step, there -"

Negi obligingly did so. In the distance, suddenly, there could be heard the a rapid series of cracking noises, as might be made by stairs folding into a slide.

"No, wait, sorry, it was the next one that you were supposed to -"

"Ha. Ru. Na. San!"

"It was an honest mistake!"

By the time the collapse of the staircase into a slide reached their position, of course, Negi had already whipped out his wand and was astride it, with Haruna perched on it just behind him and Sayo utilizing the rockets installed in her legs to hover in the center of the stairwell beside the two of them.

"Well, this probably isn't how the evil mind behind all this intended for the trap to be avoided, but I'd say that counts as one both triggered and avoided, despite everything," Negi mused while watching the steps continue to fold all the way down along the staircase.

"It really was an honest -" Haruna started to say.

"Yes, yes, I believe you," Negi assured her - in a way that honestly wasn't terribly reassuring. He sighed. "It's probably for the best, anyway. I should really get in some practice flying like this."

"You haven't gone flying since it happened?" Haruna asked.

He shook his head. "Haven't had time, what with one thing and another."

"I haven't been flying in a while either," Sayo agreed. "Well, technically, I'm always flying, but this is a little different from what I normally do." She did a little mid-air pirouette to demonstrate.

"Um, yyyeah," said Haruna, flinching a bit. "'Bout that ... um, Sayo-chan? It might be a good idea if you stop using that golem for a while, we don't know what exactly to expect here and keeping it active is kinda doing a number on my MP bar."

"... your what?" Sayo asked, bewilderedly.

"How did people ever talk about these things before video games?" Haruna asked no one in particular."

"She means that supporting the golem is leaving her a bit drained," Negi supplied.

"Oh! I'm sorry, um, hang on just a second." The golem-body flew onto the wand in front of Negi, leaning against him and taking a careful hold of his suit jacket. Before he could say anything, her head lowered sharply, exposing the cavity in her neck, from which Sayo's doll form promptly emerged. "Is this better?" she asked in slightly higher voice.

"It will be when I dismiss it, you should grab hold of him, too," Haruna said. Then rolled her eyes. "Of course, I don't have to tell any girls that, it just comes naturally, right?"

"Huh?" said Sayo as she continued crawling up out of the golem's neck.

"Never mind," Negi said forcefully, then blinked. "Wait, what do you mean, 'we don't know what to expect'?" he asked Haruna. "I thought you'd been here before."

"Yeah, but never like this." The artist gestured towards the wand, her hands somehow describing the way that they were presently defying gravity. "I don't know what kind of traps there are to deal with someone coming down the central core like this."

"... well, maybe there aren't any," Negi speculated as he started to descend ... crossing the invisible path of an electronic eye in one of the walls and setting off a wind machine further below.

"WHY DID YOU SAY THAT?" Haruna shrieked as she clutched hold of him tightly.

"Just - hold -" Negi ground out as he struggled against the surprising turbulence.

"Ahhhhh!" Sayo shrieked as her doll form was knocked loose. Shouting her name, Negi reached for her, his fingers barely brushing against the fabric of her doll's coating before she was carried up the stairwell -

And into the path of a second trap triggered - a pair of scissors that burst from the wall and promptly sliced her body in half.

"No!" Negi and Haruna both cried out.

"Oh, dear," groaned Sayo as she floated footlessly beside the pair of them, watching the fragments of the doll drop through the air. "Asakura is going to be so upset, that doll cost her so much money and now I've gone and gotten it wrecked. Maybe it can be fixed, though ... do you think?" she asked Negi, who was staring at her with eyes agape.

"S-Sayo-san?" Negi asked hesitantly.

"I guess that is a silly question, I'm sorry, sensei, I've never been a very clever girl, and sometimes I just think of very silly things when I'm supposed to be serious, and I should really really try to do better but -" Sayo began to babble.

"Oy! Sayo!" Haruna interrupted. "I thought you couldn't leave the school without help?"

Sayo looked at her oddly "I  _can't_  leave the school without help, that's why Asakura got the d-" Abruptly, the odd juxtaposition of the her current location and the absence of a certain doll occurred to her, and she stopped in midword. Silently, she examined herself, even reaching behind her to pat an incorporeal hand against an equally insubstantial butt. "This isn't right," she said at last.

"Sayo-san, what has happened whenever you tried to leave the school in the past? Before you got the doll, I mean?" Negi asked.

"I, well, when I tried it, it got ... hard to think, and then I sort of passed out, The next thing I knew, I was in the classroom again," Sayo answered, genuinely baffled at her circumstances.

"Do you understand this?" Haruna asked.

"I'm not really an expert on ghosts, but ... everything I've read on the subject says that one has to remain within a certain radius of places that were important to them when they were alive, or places that -" Negi's eyes opened wide. "- that became important to those who remembered them after they'd died! Like a grave, or something!"

"My grave?" Sayo quavered. "I don't want to see my own grave! Don't you think that'd be scary?"

"Or something!" Negi assured her, and interestingly did a better job than he had with Haruna. "But this means, this has to mean, that we're on the right track!" He frowned deeply. "But I've had just about enough of these goddamned traps in this goddamned library!"

"I think you mean motherf-" Haruna started to explain.

Her words were, perhaps fortunately drowned out as Negi called out, for the first time in quite a while, "Raskil Maskil Magister!" He then began to chant in Latin, far too quickly for Haruna (who'd picked up a bit of the language over on the other side) to understand what he was saying. But the effects were apparent, as a blue mist formed below them, with many dozens of long lines of light stretching between them.

"Are those -" Haruna asked.

"The sensors. We can avoid them easily, now. Come on, Sayo-san, we're finally making some progress!" He began to fly downward in a circle, easily avoiding the light paths.

"Yes!" Sayo cried back as she followed enthusiastically.

In less time than it takes to tell it, they had arrived at the bottom of the shaft, where Haruna pointed excitedly at the cushions spread around the bottom of the stairs. "See? I told you! It would have been fine if we'd just slid down, and we wouldn't have had to go through all that -"

"Mm-hm," Negi said absently, as he picked up the top half of Sayo's doll form, considering it a bit sadly. "Unless of course we slid down so fast that we slid off the slide before we reached the bottom and plummeted through the shaft, exposed to all those traps fast enough that I wouldn't have been able to protect us. This isn't a playground slide, Haruna-san, there's no railing to keep you in place."

Haruna blinked. She stared at the stairs-turned-slide, confirming that Negi's observations were correct. "Oh my god," she muttered. "We could've been killed."

"Yeah," agreed Sayo.

Ordinarily Haruna would have pointed out that Sayo was already dead. But right at the moment, she had other things on her mind. "No, not, not just now! Back then! I never even ... how the heck did we survive that?"

Negi sighed as he gave up trying to find the other half of the doll. "Because God looks after fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise," he told her, his tone not really suggesting which of the first two the young explorers had been. His tone lightened a bit. "Also, you had Sakurako-san with you. All right, I take it that the love letters you haven't read aren't in there?"

He was gesturing towards the only visible exit, a large doorway that lay across a short bridge spanning a moat of sorts that flowed around perhaps a third of the room's circumference.

Haruna nodded, glad to be distracted from thoughts of a past close shave. "The bridge is trapped, though."

"Of course it is," Negi replied disgustedly. "I suppose there's piranha in the water? Genetically engineered piranha that act like the ones in folklore? With lasers mounted on their heads, perhaps?"

"No, you'll just get wet and maybe have to change into the spare clothes we didn't bring," Haruna answered. "You're kinda getting paranoid there, Negi."

Sayo blinked at the familiarity, but all Negi did was make a rueful face and nod weary agreement. "All right, then. Sayo, float on over. As for us -" And without warning he grabbed Haruna, holding onto both of her shoulders with his hands, and leaped across the moat in a single bound, carefully angling the jump to avoid any of the still visible light beams. Haruna was too shocked to do much more than let out a gasp when they landed.

"Is the doorway trapped?" Negi asked.

Haruna shook her head as she tried to regain her equilibrium.

"All right, then, how are these letters organized -" he started to ask as he walked through, and then broke off.

"They, uh, kinda aren't," Haruna explained somewhat unnecessarily as she joined him and Sayo in gazing at the piles of yellowing paper that lay in the floor of the much smaller room on the other side of the doorway. The room was otherwise bare of adornment except for the light fixtures in the ceiling and another door on the other side.

"Of course not," Negi murmured, rubbing his head. "Well, we'll just have to start reading them and hope that we stumble across some sort of reference to whatever it was that happened. Incidentally, who were they sent to, if not the headmaster's wife?" An awful thought occurred to him. "And when -"

"Ah, the earliest one we found was one written in 1938, and the last one was written in, um ... I think it was 1951. Maybe a couple of years before the Old Man married her, actually, so it's not what you were thinking," Haruna hastened to explain.

"What were you thinking?" Sayo asked, curiously.

"Never mind," Negi said before Haruna could answer. "All right, then, who -"

"Tsukino Souko," Haruna said.

Sayo's eyes went wide. "Tsukino Souko?" she said, very quietly.

"Does that name mean anything to you?" Negi asked.

Sayo's mouth moved in silence for a few moments. "I ... I don't understand ..." she said. "Why was he writing to her when she was dead?"

"Huh?" Haruna asked.

"Tsuki no sou. The phase of the moon. Aisaka. One of the kanji in it means phase. It's a pun. Tsukino Souko was my pen name, when I wrote poetry. I ... I just remembered that now, when I heard the name. Why was the headmaster writing letters to me after I died?"

Negi blinked, stared at the pile. "All these are letters to Aisaka Sayo?" he said.

Suddenly, there was a rumbling sound. He tensed, preparing to grab Haruna and flee out the open door. But the threat of a collapse proved to be a mirage, for the rumbling noise was just small motors starting up and shattering a painted facade which was covering a third door to the small room. Once the motors ran down, the silence which fell was broken by a click as the door opened just a bit, revealing a strange red glow seeping through it.

With a glance at his comrades, Negi slowly walked up to the door and pushed it the rest of the way open ... then stared at what was revealed.

The other chamber was, if anything, a bit more sparsely decorated than the one where they now stood - beneath the letters, after all, there was carpeting, but the floor of this one was bare. But it was almost impossible to notice that, for the eye would inevitably be drawn to what  _was_  there instead - a giant red-glowing crystal the size of a dinner table, or possibly two dinner tables piled on top of each other. And within it, for it was translucent if not transparent, was the form of a teenaged girl, eyes closed and hands folded across her chest as she hung in mid-air.

And Negi, who had looked at her photograph every school day for months, couldn't possibly fail to recognize her.

"That's me," Sayo murmured from beside him.

"That's ... that is your body, yes," Negi agreed. "I don't understand what it's doing here, or what that thing is -" Then he broke off as a thought occurred to him. "Wait. Could it be -"

"No," Sayo interrupted. "No, that's not my body. That's ... that's  _me_. Can't you hear it? Can't you hear the heartbeat?"

Negi could not, and, from a glance at the rather terrified face that Haruna was presently showing - as well as the shake of her head when she realized that he was looking at her for confirmation - he could tell that she didn't hear it either. But as he turned to look at Sayo again, in preparation for telling her, as politely as he could, that she was imagining things, his gaze swept across the girl in the crystal ... just as her chest very, very slowly, raised and lowered in what unmistakably a breath.

"She's alive," he gasped.

"I'm alive," Sayo repeated, as she began to slowly waft towards the crystal. "But I'm a ghost. How can I be a ghost when I'm alive? I don't understand. I don't -" She was beside the crystal, now, and her hand slowly lifted as if to touch it.

"Sayo-san!" Negi called out.

"I'm sorry, Negi-sensei," she said, without looking back. "I think I have to do this."

She touched the crystal ... and vanished.

Immediately, Negi dashed forward and pressed his own hand against the crystal structure, only to have nothing happen other than the sensation of touching something very smooth and very cool to the touch.

"Where'd she go?" Haruna asked, coming up beside him.

He looked at the body within the crystal. "I think ... I think she must have ..." He covered his eyes, shook his head. "I'm out of my depths. This is all beyond me. I've never dealt with this kind of magic, never ..." He steadied himself.  _Teacher_ and _mage,_  he reminded himself.  _Your student is frightened._

"I'm not sure what happened," he said, turning to look at Haruna, willing her to become as calm as he was trying to seem. "But I think that she might have gone into her body, if this is in fact her own body. I'm not sure, but ... this is sort of like the magic which kept Asuna in suspended animation for all those eons, the one that she's going to be placed in again."

"Excuse me?" asked Haruna, blinking rapidly.

Negi sighed. "I'm sorry, I'm forgetting who knows which parts of all this." He shook his head. "Let's just ... come away from this thing, and we'll talk about it."

* * *

"So let me get this straight," Haruna said a few moments later as she sat with Negi on the carpet in the room of letters. "Asuna's going to sleep for a hundred years, so naturally, you and she decided to indulge your raging teenage libidos with each other. And Konoka and Setsuna found out about it, and Konoka, being the randy wench that she is, joined in and dragged Setsuna with her. And since then, but before you schtupped Yue and Nodoka right in front of me, you also knocked boots with Chisame, Eva-chan, and ... and ..."

"Kazumi," Negi supplied.

"NYYYYYAAAAGHHH!" Haruna replied appreciatively to this helpful assistance.

"Eh?" Negi asked, leaning away as Haruna began to yank on her head.

"With Asakura? You fucked fucking Asakura, you  _fuck_? And the bitch kept her mouth shut about it?"

"Hey!" Negi protested. "Don't call Kazumi a bitch ... or, y'know, use those other words, either," he added somewhat weakly.

She of course ignored him as she stood up and began shaking her clenched fist at the ceilling. "Gardez-vous, Asakura Kazumi!" Haruna yelled. "Gardez-vous! Thou hast broken the Code of the Self-Serving Bitches of Mahora! We had common cause, you and I, you the gossip-monger extraordinare, I the natural-born shit disturber, but you have betrayed that common cause! Now, in the ancient traditions of our people, I declare  _vendetta_  upon thee!"

"Haruna! Don't declare vendetta on your classmates!" Negi gasped. Then he seemed to collapse in on himself. "How has it come to this?" he asked quietly. "When did my life become one where I have to ask people not to declare vendetta on each other?"

Then Haruna made a great show of calming herself. "All right. Now that I know who to blame, and who will suffer horribly because of it, I feel better about all this." She turned and smiled down at him. "And I understand that you probably aren't very happy, right now, are you, Negi?"

"That's something of an understatement," Negi admitted warily.

Haruna nodded as she slowly lowered herself to her knees. "You've had adolescence thrust on you, and all the hormonal challenges that come with it. The person who's always been closest to you is going to be taken away from you, and for all your power and wisdom, you can't prevent it. And horny girls just won't let you be, and even though most people would think of that as an enviable situation, it's probably very confusing and unhappy for you, isn't it?"

"You do understand," said Negi, staring across at her in wonder. "Haruna-san ... I've really misjudged you, haven't I?"

"No more of that," Haruna said, waving a hand. "I wouldn't blame you for wanting to completely forget I was here, and run off to study that, that thing in there, in hopes of gaining a better understanding of how such magics work, so that you can come up with something to change Asuna's fate."

Negi blinked. He turned to look at the red glow, undimmed in the brief while that they'd been talking. "You know," he said in amazement. "That's an  _excellent_  idea!"

Then Haruna's hand clamped down on his shoulder. "Yes, I bet you'd love to do that. But, in the words of someone whom I both love and respect, even if she too will suffer greatly ... I'm going to fuck you now."

And she fell on him to press her lips furiously to his.

"But, Haruna-san, if you empathize with me, why are you adding to my troubles?" Negi tried to ask, but since he was being kissed rather deeply as Haruna pushed him down onto the carpet, it mostly came out as confused mumbles.

She pulled away from him after a moment, allowing a thin line of drool to gleam in the air between them before she spoke. "I bet you're wondering why I'm doing this if I empathize with your hardships?" she asked, between gasps for breath.

Negi nodded, since he didn't trust her to resist kissing him again if he opened his mouth.

"Oh, Negi. Negi, Negi, Negi," Haruna said, shaking her head. "Did you miss the part where I mentioned the Code of the Self-Serving Bitches of Mahora? I'm doing this because I'm horny, and even if I understand them, your troubles aren't my problem!" she added as she reached down, grabbed the hem of her uniform's blouse, and pulled it up over her head, revealing her bra-covered breasts to his sight.

"But, Haruna-san - this is -" Negi started to protest.

"Oh, you were cute as a hapless little boy, you're hot as a teenager, but you are so far beyond cute when you're a hapless teenager like this!" Haruna nearly gasped. "I cannot wait to feel you inside me and -"

"WHAT IN THE WORLD IS HAPPENING HERE?"

Slowly, Negi and Haruna turned to look at the source of that great shout. Owing to their respective supine and prone positions, to them it looked like they were looking at a horizontal man in robes standing in the doorway through which they'd entered the room, and so it took them both a moment to recognize him. It was Konoemon.

"Oh no," Negi whispered.

Then he recognized  _them_ , and gaped. "Negi-kun? And ... Saotome-san? What ... what are you -"

"Sir, please, I'm sure that we can explain -" Negi started to say, mostly because he had to say something, and the notion of saying 'this isn't what it looks like' didn't appeal for some reason.

"You can explain?" Konoemon said hoarsely. "You can explain why you're clearly canoodling with one of the students I put into your care? When that student isn't Konoka?"

"Yes I what?" Negi said.

"Decades have I labored to bring about anew the circumstances which almost had my daughter married to the foremost mage of his age, and you wreck the work of all those years?" Konoemon asked, looking like he was about to start crying. "How could you, Negi-kun! How could you betray me in such a manner? How -"

"Kokkun?"

Slowly, Negi, Haruna and Konoemon all turned to look at the source of that quiet inquiry. Again, owing to their posture, she looked a bit different to Negi and Haruna ... and they'd never seen her in nothing but a towel with her feet touching the floor. But not, perhaps, to the old man.

"Sayo-chan?" Konoemon breathed the question ... and then, quite suddenly, toppled over in a dead faint.

* * *

Mukashi, mukashi ...

There was once a young man who had many gifts. He was strong, quick, and smart - though of course, he imagined himself to be stronger, quicker and smarter than he actually was. And as if these gifts were not enough, he also had magical powers, which he tried, though not always successfully, to keep secret as he had been taught by his teachers. He was, in short, rather full of himself, and something of a hoodlum, as well.

Yet for all this young man's deep faults, he had one great saving grace. That was his pure and gentle love for the girl next door, who was a few years younger but just a bit smarter - or perhaps more gifted with wisdom - than he. He cared for her, he protected her, and from time to time he envisioned taking her as a bride - though as he was a rather naive young man, his notions of what a marriage entailed were decidedly chaste and romantic rather than carnal. He did not tell her of these imaginations, and only she knew whether she felt the same way about him, for a girl's heart is a secret garden.

And then, one awful night, she was injured, rather horribly, the one time he was not there to protect her. It was he who found her mortally wounded form.

You must understand - while he had magical powers, his knowledge of healing was limited to recovering from such injuries as a young man might sustain while brawling with his fellow young men. He had never bothered to learn those spells which allowed for the healing of such harm as she had suffered. And so, for the first time, the young man was confronted with the idea that his strength and his wisdom would not allow him to overcome any challenge which confronted him, and that he himself would not be the only one who suffered from his failure to do so.

He took that notion somewhat poorly.

And so, gathering up the girl's form, he ran to the home of an acquaintance, one who possessed greater lore than he (and, though he did not admit it, greater strength as well.) He begged her for her help, but she sadly refused him. "Magic does not work miracles," she told him. "You should know that by now."

What he knew and what he chose to accept were two different things. And so he cajoled her into helping him work a magic which would spare her life. Time, it was said, could heal all wounds, and so he proposed to give her that time, to bend time around her. And since time was something of an interest of this acquaintance, she agreed to help him.

He strained his talents to the utmost in this task, perhaps damaging them and himself in the process. Yet when it was done, it was well done - the girl slept in peace in a bright red gem, her injuries slowly healing and her condition not further deteriorating. It would take years for her to be hale, and so he chose to lie to her family and tell them that she had passed away, in hopes that the truth, when fully told, would lead to the forgiveness of this minor misdeed.

Years passed, and within the brilliant red gem, the injuries of the girl healed. Years passed, and their nation went to war with the rest of the world, and suffered for its hubris. Years passed, and the young man was no longer young nor as strong nor as quick, and his acquaintance no longer present, when he at last attempted to free the girl from her gem ... and learned, to his horror, that something had gone terribly wrong. The girl within the gem lived ... but her soul had departed.

And he began to hear tales of a ghost haunting the classroom where she had once studied ...

* * *

"Astral projection?" he heard a voice asking.

"Even in my youth, I was able to alter my senses so that I could see and hear ghosts," replied another, far more familiar voice. "They frightened me, mostly, so I didn't use that power very often, and never told anyone, either. Once I was sealed, though, it was easy to separate my consciousness from my body and go wandering. But ... something went wrong, and I lost most of my memories in the process. I guess they were -"

"- stored in your brain, which was mostly shut down," continued a third voice. "When your spirit projection drew closer to the body, though, it started to wake up, and when it merged with you ... well. Here we are."

"It's kind of a surprise that you recognized him, though," said the first voice. "He has to have changed a lot."

"He has," said that second, dear voice. "But he still rants the exact same way ..."

"No fool like an old fool, except for a young fool," said a fourth voice, old and tired-sounding, and it took him a second to recognize that it was his own.

A face - Negi-kun, anxious and concerned to the point of fear - bent into his line of sight. "Sir! Are you all right?"

"I will be, my boy, once you help me to sit up."

The youth did so, and Konoemon blinked as he saw that, as in the strange dream that he'd been having, Saotome Haruna was indeed wearing nothing on her upper body but a bra - yet this was easily explained, for her uniform blouse was hanging loosely on the shoulders of Aisaka Sayo, who looked at him no less anxiously than Negi had been.

"I'm so sorry, Sayo-chan," he said. "You deserved better help than you got from me."

Her nervous expression lingered only for a moment, before her face was utterly transfigured by the sweet smile he'd always loved so very much. "I'm alive," she said. "You did that, Kokkun. I can never thank you enough for that."

"But I should have realized sooner -" the old man began to say.

Unhesitatingly, she reached across and bopped him on the head. At the very least, it silenced him, and put mildly boggled expressions on the faces of Negi and Haruna. "Girls don't like boys who moan and groan about their failures!" she told him sharply.

"Yes, Sayo-chan," he said, bowing his head.

She nodded twice, in total sobriety. This promptly disintegrated into giggles as she covered her mouth while looking at him. "You are such a little boy inside, Kokkun," she told him. "You and Negi-sensei have so much in common!"

Konoemon didn't look all that pleased about that comparison, but, as he stood the rest of the way up, all that he said was, "Under the circumstances, it seems that I was a bit hasty in lambasting you for coming down here, as I was doing before I had that dizzy spell."

Negi looked perplexed. "But ... sir, you were muh?"

Haruna had just covered his mouth with her hand. "- absolutely in the right to be so critical under the circumstances," she continued on his behalf. "We really had no business coming down here, even if it did work out so well."

The old man nodded solemnly. "Indeed. However, since you  _are_  here, I suppose there's no harm in showing you this." With that, he wandered over to one of the chamber walls and tapped it with his knuckles in what sounded a bit like Morse code. A small cupboard sprang open in the wall, revealing a small package which he promptly picked up.

Haruna gaped. "No way - there actually are S-type supply caches in here? I thought those were just myths."

Konoemon looked at her fondly, eyes twinkling a bit. "Ah, Saotome-kun. You still have so much to learn ... but I'm sure that you'll find plenty of people willing and eager to teach you."

"Uh ... thanks?" she said uncertainly. "Is he flirting with me?" she quickly whispered to Negi.

"Uh duhnuh," replied Negi, whose mouth she was still covering.

Konoemon handed the package to Sayo. "Some clothes I put aside for you in the event of a miracle," he explained. "I was always hopeful, even if I didn't understand how it could happen."

"Oh, thank you," she said gratefully. "Even if Haruna-san is a shameless hussy, I really didn't want to walk out of here wearing nothing but her blouse and this towel. Just a moment please." With that, she darted back into the dimly lit room where she'd spent the last sixty-odd years.

"Hey! Who's a - okay, I'll take that one," Haruna grumped, dropping her hand from Negi's mouth so that she could fold her arms over her semi-exposed bosom as the two males in the room gave it a significant look.

"In any event, Negi-kun," Konoemon continued a bit more seriously. "Since it's fairly clear that I didn't see what I thought I saw when I arrived here in response to the alarm that was set off, I hope you'll agree that you didn't hear what you might have thought you heard when that happened, either. Correct?"

It only took Negi a second to make up his mind on that score. "Yes, sir," he said. "Of course, sir." Good boy or not, free passes didn't come along often enough for him to squander them. "But ... I do have one question, about the sealing effect. Did you really do that on your own, or -"

"I had help," the old man confirmed. "And I did not, and do not, fully understand what I did back then. Ironically, the person who helped me is a mutual acquaintance of ours, though I didn't recognize her as such until I overheard her farewell to you, Negi-kun."

He blinked. "You mean -"

"Yes. Though my memories suggest that those events were probably much later in her personal timeline than your own encounters with her, the way that she chose to say farewell to me was just like the way Chao-san did to you."

Negi frowned as he considered what that might mean.

For his own part, Konoemon seemed a bit anxious to be on his way. "Now, I'm sure that it will be fine to leave Sayo-chan in your care, Negi-kun. I have to hurry to arrange matters so that she can resume attending classes and residing here as an actual student here, rather than a ghost. Do you think that Asakura-kun will mind having her as a roommate?"

He nodded quickly. "I'm sure that would make Kazumi-san very happy." He narrowly avoided yobisute, there, and hoped the old man hadn't noticed. Haruna clearly did, and was giving him a look that, while it wasn't nearly as menacing as Asuna's Look, still spoke volumes.

Just then, Sayo, wearing a school uniform which looked just like the one her spectral image had always worn, augmented with a pair of slippers, walked back into view holding Haruna's blouse. "Is this okay?" she asked.

"You look lovely, dear," Konoemon assured her. "I look forward to seeing you at graduation." With one more smile, he went out.

"... that's a few months away, you know?" she called after him. "We'll probably run into each other before that, you know? Ah, well, it's good that he thinks about less immediate things than he once did, I guess."

"Are you ready to head back to the dorms, now, Sayo-san?" Negi asked.

"Actually, there's a place that I'd like to go first ..."

* * *

It was already early evening when they left the library, and by the time they arrived, following Sayo's unfortunately rather vague directions, at the location she'd been rather coy about, evening had definitely arrived as well. Negi was sure that he'd passed this set of ruined buildings, with their long-stilled clock tower, dozens of times without ever really paying them any attention. He had to admit that the garden of wild flowers that nestled in their shadow was rather lovely, however.

Sayo walked right into the flowers, bending down to gently caress them with her hands, before she stood up again, and turned to look back at them. "This is where it happened," she said, softly.

"You mean, this is where you di- or rather, didn't do that thing I was just about to say," Haruna replied.

Sayo nodded, then looked up at the sky. "I remember it was raining, and I ran out to try and cover up these flowers ... not these flowers, of course not. Their many-many-times over ancestors. And then ..." A deep breath. "I suppose it's probably for the best that nobody can really remember pain. But I can remember fear. Oh, I can remember fear."

"Sayo-san?" Negi asked, when she'd been silent for a moment. "Why ... did we come here?"

She turned back to look at him, warmly. "This is where my old life ended. I came to mourn the loss, and also to begin a new life. It seems appropriate for it to start here, as well. And you are here, sensei ... because I love you, Negi-sensei."

"Eh?" Negi yelped, genuinely stunned by this revelation.

"Oh, come on!" Haruna protested.

Sayo ignored her. "When I was a ghost, you never ever looked at me as anything less than a person, Negi-sensei. It began building in me from the moment you looked at me and told me that I could make friends, this love that burns in my heart."

"I don't believe this," Haruna muttered, shaking her head.

"I didn't know what it was. Perhaps I couldn't, without the memories of all that I'd left behind. But that doesn't matter. Because when I saw you kissing Chachamaru-san, looking as you do now -"

"Seriously?"

"Haruna-san, please stop interrupting me," Sayo said, frowning at her. " _You're_  here because you're a tag-along."

Haruna gaped, genuinely stunned to be getting attitude from Sayo of all people.

Into the silence, Sayo continued. "When I saw you kissing Chachamaru-san, and being so masterful, so commanding - just like Kokkun was, before he grew all old and wrinkly - somehow, even before I knew the whole truth of myself, I knew that you were the man I had been waiting for, all these long, lonely years. Will you accept my feelings, sensei?"

Negi drew in a deep breath. "I fear that you may be seeing in me more strength and courage than I actually possess, Sayo-chan. But nonetheless, I am honored to accept your feelings, and I care very deeply for you, as well."

Haruna was still gaping but now she was gaping at him. He ignored her, too.

"Then will you give me the sign of our feelings for each other?" Sayo asked, bringing her hands up to her breast. "A pactio ... and perhaps more than that?"

"Wait, more than -" Negi asked, losing a bit of his earlier poise.

"Sex," Sayo clarified.

"... yes, that's what I thought you meant," he said. "Um, let me guess, did Kazumi mention - ah, yes, she did," he said, as Sayo nodded. "Of course she'd tell you."

"I. Do not. Be-lieve. This. Shit," Haruna ground out, holding her head in her hands.

Negi sighed. "Yes," he said.

" _What?_ " Haruna cried.

The scary thing was, it was getting easy to ignore her. "If this is truly what you want, if this is truly how you want to begin your new life, then yes, I will be with you in this way as well as the ways that a teacher and friend would be. I think you are making a mistake, and being far too eager to give your self and your heart away. But I will do it with you."

"It is not a mistake, Negi-sensei," she assured him, opening her arms to hold them out to him, beckoning him to come forward and take her in an embrace. "I know that it isn't."

"... can I at least join in, then?" Haruna asked a bit plaintively, as she watched Negi march forward to do as Sayo was bidding him.

"No, of course not," Sayo said promptly. "I am willing to share Negi-sensei with anyone else who cares about him, but I have no interest in any other romantic partners for myself. Especially not female ones!"

"Has it occurred to you that you might be missing out on something?" Haruna said, desperate enough not to care how desperate she sounded. "Can you really be sure that you won't like that stuff if you've never tried -"

"I  _have_  tried that sort of thing," Sayo said, now sounding really annoyed. She sighed at the startled look on Haruna's face. "Oh, good grief, did you think your generation invented schoolgirl lesbian relationships? I was a student at an all-girl's academy, Haruna-san, I had plenty of opportunity for 'experimentation', and realized quite quickly that it was not for me. So, no, none of that for me, no thank you."

* * *

"I sense a challenge!" declared Konoka, looking up. Yue promptly grabbed her hair and pushed her face back down to her yoni, which Konoka had just been licking and fingering as the smaller girl writhed on the toilet seat. In the next stall over, Nodoka was fiercely scissoring against Setsuna, who was fortunately too blissed out to start crying about her circumstances again.

* * *

"All right but still -" said Haruna.

"In fact I would really rather you left," Sayo added.

"Oh, I bet you would," the artist started to growl.

"I'd really rather not have any arguments," Negi sighed, stepping back from Sayo's embrace and looking at her unhappily, before looking back and forth between the two young women. "Can't we reach some sort of compromise?"

"Y'know," said Haruna, teeth clenched. "I kinda think we can. Hey, Negi-kun, did you ever learn to draw the pactio circle yourself?"

Negi blinked. "Um. Well ... it's not that complicated, but ... I have to admit that I've usually relied on Chamo-kun for that sort of thing." His eyes went distant. "I wonder where he's gotten to, anyways? After the visitors from the other side arrived, he said that he was going over there to do some shopping, but that was a while ago and -"

"Uh-huh, interesting tangent," said Haruna. "On the other hand, there's me, an extraordinarily talented graphic artist who is really stunningly good at drawing from memory, and has actually practiced drawing a pactio circle a couple of times, just, y'know, in case it ever became necessary." She feigned surprise. "And oh look!"

Sayo was giving her an unimpressed look. On noticing that Negi was giving  _her_  a hopeful look, though, the former ghost sighed. "Very well, I suppose that I would be obliged if you'd create the circle so that Negi-sensei and I can enjoy our mystical union as well as the more intimate one which will follow."

"Obliged to the tune of letting me join in?"

"Obliged to the tune of letting you  _watch_ ," Sayo replied. "As long as that's all right with Negi-sensei, at least," she added, gazing up at him.

"That's fine," he said, nodding. "I'm used to that, by now."

"It must hard having so many demanding girls around you," Sayo said sympathetically.

Fighting the urge to smite the girl for her hypocrisy - for she was surely at least as demanding as any of them had ever been - Haruna coughed. "Okay, if you could head over to this little bit of remaining stonework, and stand on it, aaaand ... yeah, that should do it. Kiss away!"

They did. The kiss was not nearly as passionate or intense as his pactio with Ayaka had been, but Sayo was clearly striving for one on the same level as the one she'd witnessed him giving Chachamaru. As always, it was the sincerity that got to him, the awareness that these girls viewed him as a much better person than he actually was, and viewed his protestations against that as humility, rather than honesty. When she finally drew back, she was smiling dreamily at him. "I couldn't have asked for a better first kiss," she said, rather breathily.

Negi flushed. Then, after a moment, he frowned. "Wait, first kiss? But I thought you said -"

"First kiss in this lifetime," Sayo quickly clarified.

"Ah," he said, nodding understanding.

"Does anyone wanna look at the card?" Haruna asked from off to the side, holding said item up and fluttering it in the air a bit impatiently.

As cards went, it wasn't terribly dramatic, depicting Sayo in the very same student uniform she was now wearing, with chairs floating in mid-air behind her. "Ooh, some sort of telekinetic ... thingie?" Sayo guessed as she peered at it.

"Would you like to try it out and discover -" Negi offered.

She shook her head firmly. "Not really. I'm sure that whatever I gained from this can't possibly compare to anything you can do, sensei, and I'm all right with that. What matters is that you know that I'm always in your corner, and will always be on your side. And that I will never, ever allow you to lose hope, no matter what. This is just the symbol of that, nothing more. I don't need anything else ... nothing else at all."

 _I think I'm going to be sick,_  thought Haruna.  _Fricking_ yamato nadeshiko _and their-_

"Um ... well, then, I guess ... we should move on to the other part of this," Negi said hesitantly. "Of course, we don't have to do it here, we could go somewhere else and -"

"Here," Sayo said, drawing him into another embrace. "And now. Take me, Negi-sensei. Make me your woman."

"No foreplay?" Haruna asked dryly.

"Shut up, Haruna-san," Sayo replied warmly, and kissed Negi as the two of them slowly descended to the concrete where they'd been standing just a few moments earlier.

There  _was_  foreplay, but not very much of it. Her eyes slammed shut as he penetrated her, and her breaths were quick and shallow. But she made no cry, not then and not when he, sensing that her pain had eased, began to move back and forth, unconsciously slipping one of his hands up under her blouse to grasp at one of her small but plainly sensitive breasts. She smiled at that, and kissed him some more as her legs tightened around his waist.

That sensation awoke a bit of his self-awareness, however, and he pulled back from the kiss. "Sayo!" he gasped. "I'm, I'm going to -"

Understanding dawned in her eyes, and the legs unwrapped from around him. "Outside, please!" she cried out.

He pulled all the way back, just in time, splashing his seed on her thighs. She gazed at it, fascinated, and reached down with tremorous fingers to dab them in it, then brought them back up to her mouth. "Ew," she said, making a face. "Girls actually like to take this stuff in their mouths?"

"Some of us, yes," Haruna said. She was now sitting, her own skirt up around her hips and her hands working furiously between her legs. "About that whole sharing thing ..."

Sayo sighed as she moved away from Negi, making an effort to clean herself up a bit. "I suppose that I did say that, so -"

"Great!" said Haruna as she rolled up into a semi-standing position and stumbled over to where Negi was crouched.

"-  _so_ , if Negi wants to be with you, then I guess there's no problem," Sayo continued, just a bit more loudly. "Do you want to be with this person, Negi?" she asked, putting a certain amount of emphasis on 'want'.

"Yes, Negi, do you want to be with a girl who is really, really horny, to the point where she will probably lose her shit if she doesn't get some action real soon now?" Haruna asked, a faint touch of madness in her voice.

Negi gave her a look which clearly indicated that he wasn't fully convinced by her argument.

"Come onnnn!" Haruna whined. "Okay, look, we all know that I'm not a good person."

"Now there's an understatement," Sayo muttered.

"Man, the minute you grew a backbone, I - mmnrghh!" With difficulty, Haruna brought herself under control. "No, I'm not a good person. I've done rotten things to other people, even my friends, and laughed myself sick about them because, face it, they were funny! But this? This isn't funny! And you know why?"

"Because it's happening to you?" guessed Sayo.

"Yes!" Haruna agreed.

"... that's remarkably honest statement, if sort of -" Negi started to comment.

"But also because  _you're_  a good person!" Haruna resumed her lecture. "Good people shouldn't lower themselves to the level of bad people like me, and that's what you're doing now!"

"An argument could me made that good people shouldn't have sex with their students, either," Negi said mildly.

"Oh, for pity's sake! Thirty-one pretty damn hot chicks in your class, the headmaster  _wants_  you to score with at least one of them, and nobody expects you to be a saint!" Haruna declared, waving her hands in the air.

"... all right," said Negi, at last. "Come here, Haruna."

The artist nearly broke down in tears. "That is the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me, you cute little Casanova!" She collapsed on top of him, her hand streaking down to wrap around his flagging hardness and massage it back to full strength as she kissed him again.

Higurashi Kosuke had been a groundskeeper at Mahora for some forty-five years, first as a green apprentice - pun not intended - then as a full, salaried employee, and now, in his twilight years, as a volunteer whom none of his successors could bear to ask to stop coming around and poking around, mostly because he had trained most of them himself. He was particularly fond of checking on the growth of a certain flower bed in the shade of one of the old buildings, making sure that it was doing well and harassing the actual groundskeepers into checking in on it if it wasn't. He was heading over there to do the first part of that right when he heard the noises.

It took him a moment to recognize them as the sounds of conversation, just a bit out of earshot - for he was slightly hard of hearing - and thus unintelligible. But when he did, he was also able to identify them as the voices of a boy and a girl. Arguing, from the sound of it. And then he heard the voices become softer and quieter ...

Higurashi frowned and took another step towards the building ...

Then paused as he looked up at the setting sun.

His frown faded, and a smile crossed his face, an indulgent smile of remembered warmth. With a shrug, the old man turned and headed off, planning to terrorize the young groundskeepers of another area of campus.

* * *

Haruna had moved on to fellatio after only a few brief moments of manual stimulation, bobbing up and down as she stared up at him. "You like this, huh," she said, dabbing the tip of his erection with her tongue. "Oh, yeah, you do."

"Apparently she knows your mind better than you do," Sayo commented dryly as she sat and watched from some distance.

"Hey! Did  _I_  give color commentary when  _you_  were getting busy?" Haruna snapped, breaking off from what she was doing for a moment.

"It's not my fault that you're more verbal than I am, and give me more opportunities," the former ghost replied.

Haruna growled but determined to ignore that. Give her opportunities, huh? She'd show her. And also show Negi a thing or two in the process. She forced a grin onto her face - easily, since it was her natural expression - and slid up to wrap her big, juicy tits around him and rub him that way. Followed up by a cocked eyebrow as she gazed up at him.

"Ah!" Negi said. "Yes, you're very good at this, Ha-haruna ..."

Of  _course_  she was, not that he could have had much -

"Yes, almost as good as the Master ..."

Haruna felt her teeth start grinding, and was more or less glad that he wasn't in her mouth at the moment. Okay. Time to ride the little Casanova and  _show_  him who was top of the class.

A few moments later, as he pumped into her as she lay beneath him, Haruna tried to reflect on what had just happened. She had been sure that she was about to take command of their sex by riding him - that had been her exact thought, just that - and yet now he was thoroughly in control, just like he had been with Sayo. Except that on reflection, when he'd been doing it with  _her_ , he'd been doing what  _she_  wanted him to do to her, so that meant Haruna was even less in control than a former ghost who'd been afraid of ghosts while she was being a ghost!

"Ahhhhhh!" she cried out in protest, or something like that, before he claimed her lips once more.

Well ... maybe this wasn't so bad, after all, she thought dizzily. It might be fun to pretend to be the uke for a while, and - wait, was Sayo curling up behind him? Was she going to crowd in on their time, that bitch, Haruna had sat back and watched but she was wait, no, she was only whispering in Negi's ear, too soft for Haruna to hear over the pounding in her head. And Negi was blinking in surprise, so maybe whatever he'd just heard was confusing him more than anything else, and yet, holy shit, he was pulling her leg up, bringing Haruna's ankle up to where his mouth was and kissing it, sending sensations  _screaming_  up Haruna's spine and driving her straight out of her ever-loving mind!

How had she known, Haruna thought vaguely, beneath the overflowing feelings of climax. How had she known that ... oh ... she'd probably watched all sorts of things over the decades, hadn't she? Only stood to reason. Even if she'd been stuck in a classroom all that time, there would have been bound to be kids sneaking in to get busy, just like this ...

Now Negi was saying something, and she was honestly too blissed out to really understand it ... oh, he was probably saying he was about to -

"Inside," Haruna gasped. " _Inside!_ "

And as he sprayed up into her, she honestly thought that the startled look on Sayo's face probably gave her even greater satisfaction than the second orgasm she felt at that moment.

"Oh my goodness," Sayo gasped. "Isn't that a little bit risky to -"

Haruna weakly beckoned for Sayo to come closer. Hesitantly, the other girl did so. Haruna managed to lift her head from where it lulled to whisper, right into Sayo's ear, "Birth control pills." Followed by a gust of air blown by pursed lips.

Blushing, Sayo jerked away.

And that was even more satisfying.

* * *

Early evening had graduated to mid-evening as the three of them made their way back to the dorms, not really talking - for they found that they had surprisingly little to talk about, under the circumstances. That wouldn't have stopped Haruna, normally, but Sayo's presence somewhat curbed her enthusiasm. (Since Sayo was deliberately going for that, it would be fair to record that as a win in her column, were one inclined to keep track. Which she was, incidentally, and counted herself as being in the lead.)

When they were on the path leading up to the dorms, Negi finally found himself speaking up. "I wonder if the headmaster has told Kazumi that you'll be moving in with her?" he asked Sayo, who only shrugged in response.

"You mean like how he told Asuna and Konoka that you'd be moving in with the two of them?" Haruna asked dryly.

Negi swallowed. "Well, perhaps he'll have learned from the experience ... Haruna, it's not nice to laugh like that."

She was still chuckling faintly when the front door to the dorms slammed open and Asakura came running out. "Sayo!" she gasped. "I've been worried sick, I got back to the room and your doll was gone and if you were going to go out with Sensei - hello sensei - you should have left a note or something and ... and ... and ..." Slowly, she grew quiet as she took in Sayo's slightly altered appearance. "Sayo?" she asked quietly. "When did you get feet?"

"Hello, Kazumi," Sayo replied, smiling with just a touch of the old shyness once more. "At last we meet."

Asakura drew closer to her, slowly, tremblingly reaching out to softly press the fingers of her hand to Sayo's cheek. The former ghost tilted her head into the touch.

"You're so warm," Asakura whispered.

Before Sayo could say or do anything in response to that, Asakura had swept her up in a hug, laughing and crying all at once. "Negi!" she cried out, whirling them both around so that she could look at the teacher without letting go of her friend. "How in the world did you -"

"It's kind of a long story," he admitted with a shrug.

"I bet!" Asakura laughed - and then her laughter died in her chest when she realized that (a) Haruna was looking at her, (b) Haruna was looking at her in a  _particular_  way, and (c) Haruna was not smiling. "Uh ... Haruna? Did you -"

"I helped," Haruna said. "'Cause that's what I do, you know. I'm a helper. Yeah."

Asakura blinked, pulled back out of her hug with Sayo long enough to exchange looks with her. Her face fell as Sayo nodded in response to the inquiring look she'd just been given. "Ah-heh-heh, oh boy,'" she said, smiling ruefully.

Now Haruna was smiling, and it wasn't a pleasant sight.

"Ummm," Asakura considered.

"It's all right," Sayo reassured her as she led her friend towards the door. "We can handle her. Really."

Haruna's face didn't fall until the two of them were out of sight. "How did she do that? That thing where they understood each other without saying a word or even making an gestures?" she asked irritably.

"It's called friendship, Haruna," Negi told her, with obvious sympathy in his voice. "You might want to try mending your own friendships for a while. Meanwhile, I'm going to try and talk Fate into having your suspension lifted, once I check in with Asuna and Konoka."

"You don't have to do that -"

"No, but I'm going to do it anyway, since ... well, when you get right down to it, I'm the reason that he's here in the first place." Negi sighed. "I hoped that this would help him develop a little empathy, but I think that might not be working out."

"Ah, British understatement, how do I love thee?" Haruna muttered. "Okay. Message received. I'll go make nice with Yuechi and Nodochin." She threw him a mock salute and started to march in.

"... and speaking of empathy," Negi muttered, then shook his head. He was learning, however slowly, to pick his battles.

* * *

"I'm home," he announced shortly after as he went in through the door.  
"Welcome back darling, would you like dinner, a bath, or me?" Asuna asked without looking up from the history texts she was studying once more.

"You," he answered honestly.

"Ah, gee," she said, looking up with a smile. "We're all out. Maybe later, okay?"

"Okay," he replied, looking around. "Where are -"

"Kotaro-kun has some kind of job for the headmaster, Konoka and Setsuna are off on a double date with Nodoka and Yue, so it's just you and me for now. How was your day?" she asked.

"Well, I found out that Fate has given Haruna a suspension, helped Sayo discover her body and woke it up so that she's alive again, told Haruna about your situation, and had sex with the pair of them," he informed her calmly. "How was yours?"

"Got yelled at by Chisame after Rakan told her about the situation, had sex with her and Kotaro - did you want to say something?"

"Nope," Negi said, shaking his head and closing his lips firmly.

"Good. Good. I don't really want to tell any more people about the situation, Negi."

"So you're ready to tell everyone in the class?" he asked hopefully.

"No, that's not what I  _said_. Iinchou, maybe. But only her, and only ... Chisame has this weird idea that she loves me or ... oh, not you,  _too_."

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to."

* * *

The World Tree was a wonder of Mahora. If you were outside and your vision wasn't impaired, you could see it at all times, and it threw parts of the campus into shadow at pretty much all hours of the day. Generations had grown up beneath its bows. Even among those who wondered at it, as well they should, it was largely taken for granted.

Some things should not be taken for granted.

One of the main branches of the tree began, ever so slowly, to break away from the trunk.

**To Be Continued.**


	7. Fei, Takahata/Asuna

"Fate, we need to have a few words."

Fate paused at the door to the teacher's dormitory, then turned to look at Negi. "I quite agree, as it happens. I've been trying to contact you for some time now, without success. I was just going to head in and exchange this suit for a cleaner one before heading to the Princess' residence in hopes of finding you there."

"Ahem," Negi coughed. "I was under Library Island for most of the afternoon and cut off from cell phone contact. My apologies for worrying you."

"I was not worried," Fate replied.

"Right," Negi humored him. "That's part of what I wanted to talk to you about, I was with Haruna-san -"

"Ah," the teacher who happened to look like a boy (as distinct from the boy teacher) nodded sharply. "She doubtless ran to you in tears at the awful cruel teacher who suspended her, begging for your help in dealing with him."

"... actually, that's not even remotely what she did, and she didn't ask me to speak with you, either. I'm hoping that I can persuade you to reverse the suspension."

"This is not a matter in which I can be moved by the power of your convictions," Fate replied. "I have consulted the rules and guidelines on the subject, and I am quite certain that I am within the boundaries of my authority. Denying the students access to privileges and requiring extra tasks from them are perfectly appropriate punishments for insolent behavior such as they have demonstrated, and you know this to be true." He paused. Until now he had been speaking in his usual calm monotone, without a change of expression, but now a hint of irritation crept into both voice and face. "This entire situation is your own fault, you know."

"... I won't deny some responsibility -" Negi replied.

"Entirely. Your. Fault," Fate insisted. "Not only have you encouraged these privileged young women to view their teacher as a friend whose authority  _and person_  need not be respected, you are also the one who asked that I be allowed to take a post here. I would have been perfectly satisfied to be employed in some other capacity - Inugami's position with campus security, for example - so long as it allowed me to keep an eye on you for the project."

"I did that," Negi agreed. "I hoped putting you in this role would help you to develop a bit more empathy."

"Look how well that turned out," Fate answered, gesturing at the stains on his suit. "Perhaps I should show you the others that will need to be replaced, in addition to this one."

"I don't think that - wait a minute,  _replaced_? Fate, it's not that badly stained, you can get it out with some -"

"I would know that it had been stained!" he retorted.

"... is this really about you not knowing how to do laundry?" Negi asked suspiciously.

"I  _do_  know how to do laundry!" Fate snapped. "However, the stain would still be apparent and -"

"This is the sort of over-sensitivity that is getting you into trouble!"

"It is their insensitivity that is - this entire affair is a distraction which we do not need!" Fate said with the air of one reaching a conclusion. "And you are taking their side. Again."

"I am not on anyone's side. I don't want you to torment my students -  _my_  students, since you don't seem inclined to accept responsibility for them, you can't claim them as yours, either," he added to cut off Fate's attempted interruption. "I don't want you to torment them and I don't want them to abuse you, either. If this goes on - I'm asking you to be the bigger person and put a stop to this. A little bit of mercy would help."

"The notion that things can get worse is laughable, and I assure you that I can in fact laugh even if I generally never do so," Fate replied. "But since you asked so nicely ... the essay I required of Saotome is cancelled. That is as much mercy as I care to show. And on that note, good evening."

Negi opened his mouth to say something more, but Fate opened the door and stepped into the teacher's dormitory foyer before he could - and just as the cherry cream pie launched from the ceiling and smashed into the top of Fate's head.

Fate stood there in silence, aside from the dripping noise of the pie filling running down his head.

"There have to have been many people coming and going through this doorway this evening," he said at last. "You'd think they would have triggered it."

"Weight-sensitive pressure plate in the floorboard, covered by the mat," Negi told him quietly.

Fate looked down, moved the mat aside, and hummed. "I see. Very clever. Hakase's contribution, no doubt."

"Fate -"

"You mentioned a stain treatment?"

* * *

She'd never been so tired in all her life. Every breath in or out of her lungs felt like steam escaping from a chimney. Every muscle ached, every joint complained of stress, even her eyes hurt.

It felt great. She felt so utterly alive. And there was only one thing even slightly spoiling it as she stood there, holding the flag for first place and glancing over at her friend, her rival and her classmate, who was holding the flag for second - that being that she didn't look anywhere nearly as winded.

"Asuna," Misora finally said, once she felt able to speak. "I gotta ask you something. It's a little personal. You don't mind if I go an' ask you something a little personal, do you?"

"Go ahead and ask," Asuna answered cheerfully. "If I think it's too personal, I'll just let you know right away, since you're probably too tired to run away right now."

"Funny," Misora said, nodding to indicate the touch. "That's actually just it. Asuna, did you throw that race?"

The girl actually recoiled a bit, and for a second Misora thought she might have actually hurt her feelings. Before she could open her mouth to apologize, though, Asuna visibly calmed down and smiled a bit ruefully. "Not ... deliberately," she said. "But my head wasn't really in it, so, kinda sorta, maybe. If I'd just been focusing on running ... I dunno. It could have gone either way."

Misora frowned. "Okay. We're gonna have another race, sometime before graduation, when you  _do_  have your head in the game and  _then_  -"

"Can't you just be happy that we both got points for our class?" Asuna asked, a touch plaintively.

"No!"

"Okay," she sighed. "Of course, having asked such a personal question, you realize that you have to answer one, now? That's only right." She nodded soberly.

"Ask away," Misora said with a shrug. "I think I've restored enough that I can probably make a good run for it if I don't like it."

"Well, we'll just see about that," Asuna said, smirking. "Okay. Serious face. Cocone-chan is your Ministra, right?"

Immediately, Misora scanned the crowds to look for the solemn little girl, and found her seated in one of the high seats watching - beside Sister Shakti, amazingly! They'd both come to watch her. Well, probably not  _just_  to watch her, but they'd seen her nonetheless, and she felt happy about that.

"Yeah, that's right," she agreed. It felt so strange to be discussing this stuff out in the open after keeping it secret for so long, but it was a nice kind of strange.

"How'd that happen?" Asuna asked.

"Well, I needed to have a pactio to do stuff for the church, and she was the most immediately available magic-user so -"

"No, no, I mean, how did that  _happen_?" Asuna asked.

Was it her imagination or was Asuna leering? Had to be her imagination. Had to be. "The usual way," Misora answered.

"... what's the usual way?"

"... we exchanged rosaries, of course."

If Asuna had been leering, she'd stopped now and was gazing at Misora with wide, incredulous eyes. "Rosaries?"

"Strings of beads, to remind one of a certain sequence of prayers," Misora explained. "I wear hers as a necklace."

"And ... and that -"

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it," Misora said, turning to wave at Cocone.

* * *

"Yuna," Ako said quietly. "There's something I have to tell you. It's very important to me."

"Uh huh," Yuna replied as she peered into her improvised periscope while Mana watched with amused interest.

"Are you listening to me?" Ako asked, still speaking quietly.

"Yeah, sure am," Yuna answered. "Where did these guys get the budget for a helicopter's fuel, anyway? That can't be cheap."

"It's a black line item in a certain government's budget," Mana explained. "Under the category 'recruitment of foreign assets'."

"Yuna ... I  _hate_  you."

Yuna blinked and turned to look in mild confusion at her friend, who was sitting beside her behind the barricade. "... this is a weird way to confess your love."

"I'm  _not_  confessing my love," Ako replied through gritted teeth.

"Sure you are," Yuna replied. "That's how these scenes always go, the quiet build-up and then -"

"This is not one of those scenes. This is the scene where the put-upon sidekick finally voices her frustration with the ridiculous situation she's in thanks to the hero. And since it wasn't Negi-kun who persuaded me that signing up for a hardcore survival game was a good idea, that title is temporarily conferred upon your unworthy self."

"The word you're looking for is protagonist, really," Mana suggested.

"Oh come on, you have to admit that this is a good way to keep those skills we picked up over there sharpened."

"What skills?" Ako wailed. "I was a waitress! And over here I'm a nurse! And I can't nurse someone who's suffering from being hit by a paintball, now can I? Instead you handed me this -" She shook the long-barreled weapon she was holding in her hands. "- thing! And told me to use it!"

"That is a rifle," Mana supplied. "There are many like it, but that one is yours."

"Whoopie," Ako retorted, her usual rational fear of Mana temporarily in abeyance.

"Come on, this is kind of fun! I mean, figuring out how we're going to take down a helicopter is sort of work, but it's a fun kind of work!" Yuna said. "And if we can deal with these bad dudes, Fate's not going to be a problem!"

"I hate you, Yuna!" Ako repeated. "Ever since we got back, you've been getting worse and worse, and now this!"

"Oh, you don't hate me. You're mad at me, you're jealous of my smooth moves, and, let's face it, there's a good chunk of unresolved sexual tension -"

"You're as bad as Haruna and you're using her lines, now, too!"

* * *

"That's wonderful to hear!" Ayaka enthused over the phone. "Congratulations, and good job." She beamed at Negi once the call was over. "Sensei, that was Fei-san, calling to tell me that she took first place in the martial arts competition."

"That's excellent news!" Negi said, reviewing the listings of the class' progress in their various events. "From the looks of it, the class is going to do really well in the standings."

"I'm sure that it's all thanks to your example, sensei," Ayaka assured him, smiling oh-so-warmly.

"Well, I can't take too much of the credit, but, thank you," he replied, blushing. He'd honestly been a bit concerned that the class rep might grow colder to him now that he was (temporarily) grown up, but that hadn't been the case. When they'd met today to discuss some details of the project, he'd actually been moved to thank her once again for taking all of this so calmly.

"It matters not at all, sensei, not at all," she'd told him. "Just as a young maiden's heart will still beat in my own breast when I am old and only handsome instead of lovely, so too is your heart still that of a charming and dashing young gentleman even if you are no longer as sweet and cute as you once were. The heart is what matters. This, Yukihiro Ayaka will always believe."

"That's wonderful, Iinchou, but could you please get up, people are starting to stare a bit," he'd replied, gently trying to get her up from her kneeling position in front of him. Sweet, but sort of nuts. She hadn't changed a bit.

"And I understand that you're sponsoring the campus-wide event this year," he said, back in the present. "What is it going to involve?"

Ayaka giggled. "Oh, sensei, you rapscallion. Your secret is safe with me, don't worry."

Negi blinked. "Uh ... secret?" he asked, feeling mild panic welling up. Which of the several secrets he was presently keeping was she talking about?

"All has been prepared, and the event will go off just as you planned."

"Um ... iinchou, I'm really not sure what you're talking about," Negi said slowly.

"... what?" Ayaka asked, going white.

"No, really, I don't know -"

"But ... but ... Misa-san assured me that the whole thing was your idea, to make your new colleague feel welcomed, and Asakura-san and Sayo-san were there with her and the cheerleaders, confirming everything she said, and surely neither of them would ... lie ... to ... me ... in ... your ... name ..." Ayaka's voice got higher and higher as she progressed, ending in what was for all intents and purposes a squeak.

"Oh no," Negi said, closing his eyes. "What have they done?"

* * *

"Fate-sensei?"

Fate was quietly observing an archery competition with an expression that could best be described as scornful. He was really only here because it was the one building on campus he was reasonably sure had not been trapped to have something that would propel a cherry cream pie towards his person. But the demonstration was extremely boring - how was firing against fixed targets, with plenty of time to take aim, even remotely a test of someone's marksmanship? - and so he was glad for a momentary distraction, even if it came from one of them.

"Yes, Okochi-san?" he replied.

Akira was biting her lip and looked somewhat nervous. "I've given it a lot of thought, and I've decided that I should probably - even though you are kind of mean, I don't think you really deserve to -"

And then she vanished.

Fate blinked.

* * *

"They're going to  _what_?" Negi practically shrieked.

"They told me it was your idea, though!" Ayaka wept. "And it seemed like the sort of friendly, rambunctious, cute boyish thing you'd do!"

"Ram- cute - nyaaaagggh!" The headache, which had never really gone away, was now on the verge of becoming a migraine.

And then, high in the sky above Mahora, a holographic projection of Asakura's grinning face and upper body appeared. "That's right, you lucky people!" she declaimed, perhaps in response to some cue that Negi didn't personally witness. "It's the start of this year's campus-wide event! And this year it's 'Rush the Teachers! * The Super-Scavenger Competition!" Behind Asakura was a hologram of Sayo throwing holographic rose petals into the air.

"Nyaaaagggh," Negi repeated, this time in the form of a low moan.

"In this event, the goal is to hunt down our teachers and make completely unreasonable demands of them! And this year, there's a special bonus for anyone who manages to track down the beloved -" Asakura's hologram began coughing, perhaps to cover the utterance of the word 'bullshit'. "- child teacher of class 3-A!" Now Sayo unrolled a poster ... with Fate's unsmiling face clearly emblazoned on it. "Anyone who successfully obtains their item from this handsome fellow -" More coughing. "- will have their points multiplied two hundred-fold! Isn't that amazing?"

"Wait, they told me that it was only going to be a hundred-fold," Ayaka said while Negi held his head in his hands and made sobbing noises. He lifted it long enough to gaze at her incredulously. "Well, I just think that's a little excessive," she explained.

Negi made strangled noises.

* * *

Fate, who had quickly left the archery hall after Okochi's surprising disappearance, was standing in the street watching this display with as much emotion as he ever showed.

"And furthermore, teachers, you should be aware that if anyone other than a member of your class borrows from you, you'll get a penalty! Fate-sensei's penalty will of course be two hundred times worse!" Asakura announced.

"They cannot be serious," Fate murmured.

At that very moment, a small number of what were clearly tanks rolled up the street, and their artillery pieces quickly rotated to point at him. "Attention, Fate-sensei!" declared the tank's commander over a loudspeaker. "We are the combined representatives of every military and wargaming club on campus. Please surrender immediately, we have no desire to harm you, but our honor obligates us to collect -" A pause, as if someone was reading a note. "- your boxers."

"... all right, they apparently  _can_  be serious," Fate concluded, as he departed by air, taking advantage of the cloud cover thrown up by the tanks' sudden assault. He considered petrifying them and explaining it to any bystanders as 'CGI' - this apparently being readily accepted as an explanation, against all logic - but decided to save that for when he actually confronted the delicate young ladies who were responsible for this.

* * *

"All right, I've got to go help Fate. I know he probably won't thank me for it, but - well, it's just the right thing to do," Negi said, having finally regained a bit of poise.

"That's so noble, sensei," Ayaka told him, nearly swooning. "But -"

"Oh, and one more thing," announced the hologram Asakura. "As this is an affair of honor, we hope that no cute English teachers will be so base as to interfere ... but if one of them does, we have plans laid for that! So please butt out, Negi-kuuuun!"

Negi shook his head. "She ought to know that I won't do that," he said, and drew a card from his sleeve to bring it to his forehead. "Asuna, I think I'm going to need your help to -"

 _Can't, sorry,_  Asuna telepathed back.  _Something has come up._

_... what?_

_Never you mind,_  she replied a bit tartly, as an involuntary image of a piece of paper with the words 'Takahata-sensei's chastity' written on them made its way across the link ... which abruptly cut off.

Negi's jaw hung loose for a moment as he stared up at Asakura's hologram, which was grinning broadly. "... okay, that's dirty pool," he said to her, knowing that she couldn't hear him but needing to get it off his chest regardless.

* * *

"Well, I must say that I am very impressed," Fate said, in the usual stoic tone which basically made him sound incredibly sarcastic even if he actually meant what he was saying. (Did he? Make up your own mind.) "As strategies go, this has been a very good one. My own Ministra could learn a thing or two from you. Or rather they would have been able to do so, had you not been about to spend the rest of the school year in a petrified state."

He was glaring across the patio of a certain cafe in the school district at Yuna, Haruna, Kazumi, Sayo, and Misa. To his deep annoyance, only Misa seemed to be showing an appropriate amount of fear in response to that pronouncement of doom.

"Oh, don't even," Haruna sneered, glaring at him as she held up her notebook, doubtless preparing some sort of golem to assault him. "They won't let you do that, and you know it, and we know you know it."

"Perhaps," Fate replied tranquilly. "But I do think that I won't receive too much in the way of criticism if I leave you in that state for the duration of -"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, threaten us with the loss of the festival, that worked so well for you last time," Haruna interrupted. "It really didn't. That's what lead right to this. You succeeded in pissing off Yotsuba Satsuki with that little gesture - do you realize how badly you have to be doing as a teacher in order to pull that off?"

"I am simply exercising the appropriate -"

"Bullshit," Haruna sang out. "There are tough teachers in this school. Before Negi came along, we were getting taught by one of the toughest. And you know what, he never managed to get the whole class united against him the way that you have. That's how badly you suck as a teacher. Well, whatever, we're ready for you now."

"Oh, really," Fate openly sneered, rolling his eyes. "And where may I ask is Miyazaki? One would think that she and Ayase would want to be present for my incipient thrashing." And with her mind-reading, she might have made this just slightly difficult for him.

"Nodochin and Yuetchi are on Negi-interception duty," Haruna answered sweetly. "They're really kinda good at it, you know."

 _She's baiting me,_  he realized. And then quite promptly also realized,  _It's working. No. Let it be said that they cast the first blow. Doubtless some sort of ranged attack from Akashi and then -_

"Get him!" Haruna ordered, and then all of them except for Yuna charged.

 _'Get him'?_  That's  _their plan?_  Fate thought incredulously. The shock was enough to give them time enough to close and dogpile him before he could react. But it was insane, he was vastly stronger than them and could retaliate -

"You pissed off the nicer students in our class," Haruna hissed into his ear. "For example -  _now_!"

And then, from above, the bolt flashed down.  _That satellite of theirs -_  Fate had enough time to realize before it struck -

Destroying his clothes, and Haruna's, to say nothing of the several paper golems that were dogpiling him. And now the shock of being denuded gave Haruna the time she needed to press up against his now-naked form and -

 _What?_  Fate thought as he was deeply kissed.

"Negi kisses better than you," she said when she pulled back. Then, soft enough for only his ears yet harsh enough to make it cut, "And he  _fucks_  better too!"

_**What?** _

"Now, Yuna!" Haruna shrieked when she saw his face turn incandescent with fury.

With difficulty he'd never imagined, Fate turned his livid glare away from Satome to where Akashi was still standing except no she wasn't it was another golem and its features were going slack and  _behind_ him he could hear the discharge of those blasted guns and the sensation of the bullets slamming into him as he rolled and saw her grinning at him as the invisibility faded from her and Murakami and then the world went white.

When he could think again, he was staring up at a blue sky. It was rather pleasant. And then Yuna intruded, looking down at him. " _Ten_  three-minute magic suppression bullets," she informed him. "Enjoy mortality."

Then she was joined by Murakami, who looked bewilderingly smug. "You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting," she declared, unfolding a piece of paper with the words "Fate-sensei's Dignity" written on it. "Welcome to the Old World.  _Jerk._ "

"Scatter!" cried Haruna's voice from outside his field of vision, and the two girls disappeared.

Fate decided that he would lay there for a while. It seemed the smarter move.

* * *

To her credit, Ayaka offered to come along and help him rescue Fate. Negi suspected (correctly) that she wasn't so much concerned about Fate or even outraged at having been deceived by the rest of the class ... again ... as she was wanting to get in on an adventure at long last after having been sidelined for so long. And, of course, the other thing. Regardless of her motives, though, Negi decided to decline her offer, not without regret. He had a hunch that this was going to be more dangerous than it seemed, and Ayaka's enthusiasm was not, sadly, a replacement for experience.

 _But then again_ , he mused as he ran along, thankful for his current anonymous state - to the crowds of students participating in the event, he seemed like nothing more than a some eccentrically garbed member of one of the boy's academies, and even those few who'd been introduced to 'Nagi Springfield' had other matters on their minds.  _On the other hand ... the only way to get experience is to have experiences, and if I've agreed to take Iinchou as a partner, aren't I obligated to see that she has such experiences? Or is that just an excuse to keep her close because -_

 _You can't be our teacher anymore,_  Konoka's words echoed in his mind yet again.

He was really starting to look back wistfully at the days when all he'd had to worry about was whether or not they'd do well in their exams.

And then the sky was lit with a furious incandescence for a few moments. Negi's jaw dropped as he stopped dead in his tracks and whirled his head to the side where the light had been brightest. "No," he said aloud. "They can't be serious."

"Oh, we serious," said a familiar voice just a bit ahead of him. "We very, very serious."

Negi looked forward once more. She was standing athwart his path, her face solemn and her hands firmly clenching her staff. Her stance was firm, and she was ready.

"Ku-roshi," Negi breathed. "They sent you to stop me."

She nodded. "Also library girls, and Maki-chan, and Akira-san ... but you face me, and not them. It is what it is. I know that I cannot hope to match you, but I must do honor to the confidence they show in me by asking me to face you ... and ... and ..." She trailed off, blushing.

"What?" he asked, bewildered at the turn the conversation had abruptly taken.

"Must not let it get in the way ... this is the path, and ..." Fei was muttering more to herself than to him, even though she kept glancing up at him and her blush got deeper each time she did so. "... but ... so good he looks ... lean and muscled and -"

"Oh no," Negi murmured. He had abruptly guessed where this was going. Even he could only be a fool for so long.

"No," Fei said at last. "If this is to be, then I  _must_. If Yue can do it, then I can be as brave." Deeeep breath.

"I've changed my mind, I'm not going to go help Fate after all -" Negi bravely tried to stop the inevitable.

"Basically ...  **I loving you!** " Ku Fei shouted at the top of her lungs.

* * *

"... loving you ... loving you ... loving you ..." echoed through the air.

On a building some distance away, Fate's nude form twitched.

* * *

"Ahhhh!" Fei sighed in relief. "Oh, Paru was right, it feels  _good_  to get it off the chest."

"Haruna!" Negi groaned into his hands, which were of course covering his face.

Heedless of this, Fei resumed her stance. "And now I fight without regrets! Accept my feelings and incidentally several full-force blows of this staff! If I win you marry me okay?" she added just a bit quickly.

"... okay," Negi said weakly.

With a cry of supreme abandon, she charged him and brought down her staff's ferrule on a sweeping arc towards the top of Negi's head, fully expecting him to block it or dodge it at supersonic speed.

It was a day for surprises, however.

**CRUNCH.**

A timeless interval later, Negi found himself musing about one of the stranger aspects of his current condition - the fact that he rather enjoyed the experience of losing consciousness. Well, obviously, he didn't enjoy the times when he wasn't conscious, since there wasn't really a  _him_  to do the enjoying. But moments like this, as he slowly came awake, were truly enjoyable for their rarity. He could work himself to exhaustion, but once he stopped working, his vital energies replenished themselves far too quickly for him to ever normally fall asleep. (Instead, when he lay in bed, he normally just waited for dawn. Well, that was what he'd done before he'd discovered sex, at least.)

Internal reality asserted itself first, and he had to admit that there were parts of the experience that weren't all that pleasant, like the pain of injuries as they knit back together. But that usually passed quickly. And then there was a subjectively long while before he regained awareness of the world around him, in which he could enjoy genuine rest without distractions. Sometimes his father showed up and they had interesting conversations. Well, he wasn't sure whether or not that was really happening, but the conversations were interesting enough that he didn't worry about it too much, even if he could never really remember their substance later.

In the fullness of time, of course, external reality returned as well. In this instance, that reality primarily took the form of the sound of someone clearly sobbing in great distress. Well, break time was over, so he really ought to see if he could help whoever - oh. That's right. It was probably Fei. Yes, he definitely ought to do something about that.

He opened his eyes and the light streamed in as he sat up, just a bit unsteadily. Ku Fei was sitting astride his legs, her hands over her face and sobs wracking her body. "Ku-roshi?" he asked, voice a bit raspy.

His sifu's hands came down and she stared at him, aghast. "Buh," she said.

"I'm all right," he assured her.

"Buh," she repeated.

"... I'm sorry, Ku-roshi, I don't think I recognize your dialect -"

"But I smash your head!" she cried out. "It go all lumpy and grey stuff on staff and blood and eeek! I make horrible mess no can show in fun sports festival manga!"

"Well, this isn't a fun sports festival manga, so we're covered, there," Negi noted calmly. "And I'm all right now, see?" He gestured at what his own head, which he hoped was completely repaired - it should be, but it wasn't as though he could see his own head. That would be a really useful ability, come to think of it. He should look into developing that technique. Later. There was more important stuff to do right now.

"Your magic can  _do_  that?" Fei asked, amazed.

He nodded, just once. He didn't really feel up to explaining the whole situation to her. But the facts should speak for themselves.

Except perhaps not, for she'd started to look genuinely upset again. "I never beat you," she said. "No matter what I do, no matter what move I use, you never stop fighting, would you?"

"I don't know if I'd say that," Negi protested. "I mean, I was out for, what was it, half an hour?"

"Five minutes. Maybe less."

"Oh. Um. Well, you could do a lot of things that would really inconvenience me when I woke up in five minutes, and -"

"But I only get that if you not even try to fight back," Fei groaned. "No, I never equal you, not at all."

"No," he said, seriously, reaching out to grab her shoulders. "It's a cheat, Ku-roshi. If I didn't have magic, if it came down to pure skill and strength, you'd beat me every singe time. I truly believe that. I'm  _sure_ of it." A deep breath. "And you beat me this time, too. So when's the ceremony?"

"Ceremony?" she asked blankly.

"The wedding ceremony," he reminded her.

"Oh," she said just as blankly. Then the deepest blush he could imagine settled on her features. "Oh!" she repeated. "Uh ... about what I said ... um ... forget it? I not really sure if I ... feel ... that way, even though now you ... look ... so ... good ..." Her voice slowed and stilled as she gazed into his eyes.

Then she took a deep breath. "Important to establish compatibility first," she said. "Chao told me that. Not sure she meant this, but -" And she quickly leaned forward and claimed his lips.

* * *

Meanwhile ...

It had been an interesting and unusual day. Well, interesting, at least - Takamichi supposed that festival days were supposed to be "unusual", so if anything, they could only be unusual if nothing out of the ordinary took place. Of course that line of thinking only led to a gigantic paradox, so he'd usually try to avoid it. But in all honesty, today had been a bit out of the ordinary even for a day which was supposed to be extraordinary.

To start with, there'd been the announcement of the scavenger hunt. No, thinking about it, that wasn't extraordinary. He'd participated in too many of these events, both as a student and later as a teacher, for it to be other than familiar and even heartwarming. The announcement that Tertium (as he still thought of him and probably always would) was being specially targeted in this year's festivities, on the other hand, was a genuine surprise. It had made him chuckle a bit, and consider going to the aid of the newbie.

He didn't, of course. Both because he still wasn't sure whether he agreed with the logic of having the recent enemy teaching at the school - the fact that Kurt was all for it more or less convinced him that it was likely a bad idea - and because he was fairly sure that Tertium would refuse any assistance offered. But even more so because he didn't think he was going to get the chance to do so, since he was somewhat under siege himself.

The students who'd chased him down might not have been ambitious enough to try and hunt down Tertium, but they were still determined pursuers. And well-coached, too - he'd been really amazed at the tactics on display. Amazed and a bit suspicious, to be honest, but he'd still surrendered his jacket, tie, belt and glasses as they'd sequentially requested once they succeeded in catching him, since he didn't think any of them had broken any of the very few rules of this particular event.

The loss of his glasses had hurt him. He wasn't blind without them or anything like that, but it did make it a bit hard to get a good look at his surroundings. So when the next group of students came along in search of his watch, their leader - one of the girls in his new home room - had taken pity on him and offered to take him to a safe place where he could wait out the rest of the event. None of them wanted to apply a penalty for having someone outside their class catch him, after all, and so it was in their interest as much as his own.

He'd been relieved enough by the offer that he hadn't noticed how ...  _rehearsed_  it sounded until after they guided him to the building. He recognized it by the smell - the old teacher dormitories where he'd lived in the earliest years of his employment here, with Asuna at first. The familiarity also distracted him from considering the possibility that this was a trap of some sort. It wasn't until after he'd sat down in one of the apartment's chairs and the students had gone on their way that proper paranoia asserted itself.

Reviewing all of this, he decided that he probably shouldn't stay here. But just as he began to sit up, the lights in the room turned off, robbing him of nearly all the vision he'd had. Naturally, he froze. And then he felt something soft, fabric-like, slipping over his face, cutting off the last traces of sight he possessed. A mask? Who'd put a mask on -

"Fu fu fu fu," laughed a quiet female voice from behind him. "She  _so_  owes me!"

Behind the mask, Takamichi blinked. "Haruna-kun?" he asked aloud.

"Glk," she said. "Curse my ham tendencies! Look, just sit still and enjoy this, will you?" He heard her scurrying away before he could reply.

What in the world was going on here?

And then he felt the fastener of his trousers coming undone, and their zipper sliding down. His jaw dropped.  _This_  had been nowhere on the list of things he'd even remotely considered as a possibility ... except, wait, no, he was getting ahead of himself, surely there was a simpler explanation. Yes, and actually, this one made sense - someone had gotten assigned 'Takahata-sensei's trousers' and this was simply a way for them to take them without having him know who was doing so, because -

And then he felt his boxers being tugged down.

Are they after my boxers, too? he thought hopefully.

And then he felt a moist warmth around his lower member.

No, they are clearly not after clothes, Takamichi thought wearily. He briefly wondered if someone involved in planning the scavenger hunt had had the extreme bad taste to put a request in for 'Takahata-sensei's semen', considered that if Haruna was involved then that was entirely plausible, and decided it didn't matter. The important thing was to put a stop to this before it went even further than it already had. He reached down to press his hands against the shoulders of the person who was kneeling before him, then began to push as gently as possible.

It was like pushing against the proverbial brick wall.  _Strong!_  he thought, surprised.  _Well, then, I'm sorry, whoever you are, but I'm going to have to use a bit ... more ... force!_

And as he shifted the person before him, he heard the gentle tone of a pair of bells.

"... no," he said aloud, too shocked to keep his tongue still. "It can't be."

"Oh," said the oh-so-familiar and beloved voice. "It can be. And is." A lick on the head of his organ. "Your princess ..." Lick, lick, lick. "... wants her knight ..." Lick, all the way down to his testes. "... to give her something special for the festival." And then he felt himself being swallowed, the tip of his member pressing up against something that he somehow knew were the walls of her throat.

His mind went away then.

When it came back again, he was horrified to realize that his member was no longer in Asuna's mouth - instead it was in a much tighter but equally moist and warm orifice, and from the way that he could feel her breasts and each hard little nipple pressing up against his chest, it was obvious which orifice. For a few moments, he simply sat there and was horrified as he listened to her breathing as she rocked back and forth against him, with clearly experienced motions.

"Asuna," he finally gasped.

"Ah, you're back," she said, between gasps of her own. "This was starting to get a bit creepy with you so non-responsive. I'm so glad you came back before we were all done. Grnnnn," she added in a groan.

"What are you -" He broke off in mid-question, for it was fairly obvious what her response would be. "This is  _wrong_!" he said instead.

"Okay."

The short and simple response, when juxtaposed with the fact that she didn't stop, left him flummoxed. "Okay?" he repeated.

"Yeah. Okay. It's wrong. Should I stop doing it just because it's wrong?"

"... yes?" he answered hesitantly.

"Don't want to," she replied far more swiftly. "I guess that makes me a bad, bad girl, then. Maybe the kind of bad, bad girl whose love you can accept, since you're such a bad person yourself, and all that  _crap_." Her words, like the thrusts of her hips, turned savage.

"Don't, don't say that -"

"Oh, so I'm not a bad girl? Then maybe you're such a bad guy, after all. Maybe you do deserve to love and be loved, no matter what you tell yourself. I think that's much more likely!"

"Don't - who told you -"

"All kinds of people care about you, even creepy perverts," she replied, her breathing starting to get faster. "But that's not important right now. What matters is ... I want this, and I think you  _need_  this, so let - us - then -  _dooooooo_  -" Her words became a wail as she climaxed, the squeezing drawing his own release up and out of him.

His mind went away again.

When it came back, he was alone, the mask over his face was gone, and the lights were on in the room. He could see enough to feel a metallic feeling resting against his forehead, and reached up to determine what it was. His glasses - or at least a pair of glasses which matched his prescription, judging by the way that the world swam into clearer focus when he slid them down in front of his eyes. His pants were fastened once more, and there was no sign that there had ever been anyone in the room with him.

Except for one thing, a piece of paper resting in his lap, with his name and the word 'Chastity' written on it.

He'd been right in the first place. It was an interesting and unusual day.

* * *

Elsewhere ...

It hadn't been easy for him to persuade her to take this ... conversation ... elsewhere. The sheer enthusiasm with which Fei confronted almost everything led her to want to do this new thing she'd never before experienced right then, and right  _there_. Negi, on the other hand, was well aware that they were in a pubic thoroughfare and should probably not do things alarming to horses there, and so he worked hard to convince her that they would do better to withdraw to somewhere more private. Where they'd be less likely to be disturbed.

She'd volunteered her room.

Well, that certainly filled the privacy requirements, since Haruna - her roommate - was likely to be busy with what Negi  _should_  be doing right then, he thought guiltily. And since he was the one who was insisting that they go elsewhere, it would be churlish to refuse her concession to his argument. So they went there, quickly, hand-in-hand, avoiding the crowds and any of their acquaintances.

Or so they thought ... for they were not so unobserved as they believed.

But the two of them arrived at the dormitory and slipped into her room without incident, and once there resumed their passionate kisses as they made their way to the beds, their clothes falling from them as they went. By the time that they collapsed to the mattress, Negi was only in his undershirt and trousers, while Fei's bra hung loosely on her stomach, just above her panties, exposing her small and firm breasts to his sight. He promptly bent down to take one of the dark brown nipples in his mouth.

"Ahh!" she gasped at the feeling that ensued. "So ... so strange, this. First time I ever touched by man not trying to hit me ... oh that sound so wrong when I say it ... like I like being hurt ..."

Negi paused, looked up at her. She avoided his gaze. He considered his next action carefully ... then, as gently as possible, bit down.

She screamed. "Negi-bouzu! Bad, bad! No do that -"

So of course he did it to the other one as well.

"Mmmmm!" she gasped, hand over her mouth to hold in the scream this time. That she could do that told him that she wasn't really upset, rather the contrary. But ... well, this was all a bit much for Negi. The whole reason he'd been unwilling to fight back against her, after all, was the fact that he didn't want to hurt his students, even if they knew what they were getting into.

It may be that he could no longer be their teacher ... but they'd  _always_  be his students.

"All right," he said, just a bit hoarsely, as he reached down to her panties, pushing them a bit to the side and rubbing at what lay beneath to confirm that it was lubricated enough. "This is probably going to hurt a little bit, too."

She sniffled. "Okay," she said. "I strong. I can take it. It nooooooh wow wow wow," she said as his own pants opened up and she saw the it she was thinking about taking.  _That_  was supposed to go inside her? Seriously?

"We don't have to do anything if -" Negi began to say, genuinely hoping that this time,  _this time_ , the girl would see reason and avoid this precipice - but he didn't have to finish, for he could tell from the suddenly stubborn look on Fei's face that this time was going to be just like all the others.

She promptly rattled off something in Chinese far too quickly for his limited understanding of the language, then added, in Japanese, "A warrior knows no pain! Show no mercy for none shall you receive!" Through clenched teeth, both for the sake of ferocity and to stop them from chattering.

"All right," Negi said regretfully, not even bothering to sigh this time. He reached down, took hold of himself, and pressed its tip to the entrance of her vulva. With a deep breath, he pushed up and into her.

The warrior screamed. Well, she started screaming, at least, but Negi promptly planted his lips on hers to muffle the sound as he began to move back and forth. Her arms came up and wrapped tightly around him, clawing at his shoulder blades in ways that would probably have been very painful to anyone who wasn't basically invulnerable. The way that her hips clenched around his, tightening her passage in the process,  _was_  a bit painful, actually - that particular area was not  _quite_  as impervious to pain as the rest of him.

He pulled back, to ask if she wanted him to stop, and saw that her eyes had rolled up in her head and her jaw was hanging loose. Negi correctly deduced that he wouldn't get much in the way of conversation from her at the moment. Left with no other option, he kept on pounding into her, varying the pace a little - as he'd learned from practice, many girls liked that sort of variety, and from the incoherent noises that Fei was making, she was that way as well.

Soon enough, he felt the sensations which told him that his climax was about to be upon them both. Breaking his latest sloppy kiss with her, he cried out, "It's coming! It's coming! Where -"

She grunted and pulled him more tightly against herself, so that he sprayed up into her. As he did so, she made a noise that he'd never heard before, something between a sigh and and a sustained high note.

"I hope ... I hope this was a safe day," he said to her, after a moment.

"Fret not," she said, eyes still on the ceiling rather than his. "We have beautiful, powerful children when we married."

"... um, the joke isn't really funny under these circumstances," he told her as gently as he could.

"... joke?" she repeated, blinking, and turning her gaze on him.

"Yes, the joke about us getting married," Negi said, nodding. "That's what you said the first time, when you agreed to be my sifu, remember? That you were joking about us getting married if I became strong enough? Well, I thought that a good way to show you that I was finally mature would be to joke about it with you."

Fei stared at him.

"You were joking. Right?" Negi asked.

"... yes! Of course! Ha ha!" Fei lied. "Oh, you such a merry prankster, Negi-bouzu! Naughty naughty!" Shake shake shake her head went in dismay, grinning all the while. "But ... we must now make sure that no one else finds out about joke -"

"Too late," said Haruna from the bedroom's entrance, where she was leaning against the doorframe with a wicked smile on her face.

"... no one else, I mean," Fei continued after recovering from the bolt of sheer mortal terror she'd just experienced.

"You have my solemn word of honor I won't tell anyone about this," Haruna said. Then she turned to the side. "You hear me, you three? I'm not saying a word about how our lover has yet another lover! Wild horses could never tear it out of me!"

Slowly, Konoka, Nodoka, and Yue each bent over to look into the room, with varied expressions on their faces ... but perhaps it would be best to move away from this scene.

* * *

He had to admit to a certain confusion as to why a fancy rooftop cafe had a collection of empty barrels in its back room. They did not seem the sort of thing that a cafe would accumulate. However, given the demands of necessity - Fate did not possess the quality of 'modesty', but his own aesthetic would not allow him to saunter about naked, and he lacked the skills (or the ability to gain them) to turn the cafe's collection of table cloths into a more suitable suit - he was inclined to overlook the absurdity. For now.

And so he made his escape from the cafe carrying a barrel around his waist, with its top clutched in the hand that wasn't holding it up. The pavement was a bit uncomfortable on his bare feet, but he could take it until his magic came back. There would be no difficulties. He was a superior entity, and could -

Then he stubbed his toe and collapsed in agony. He had just enough presence of mind to pull the barrel down around him and pop the lid onto its top so as to look like a real barrel (if one didn't look closely enough to see it didn't have a bottom.)

As he grimaced in fading pain, Fate found himself nodding somewhat against his will. Despite everything, he had to admit that the girls had succeeded in stealing away his dignity. He had underestimated them. Again.

Well. The third time would pay for all.

As he sat there, hiding in his barrel, Fate gradually came to the realization that his current position was not altogether an unenviable one. Barring the possibility that more abstract demands had been issued to the students, he couldn't really have anything else taken away from him. Even if there were - which Fate decided was actually a bit more likely than he'd prefer - he now possessed an ideal hiding place where he could wait and recuperate his forces until his powers returned to him. After all, the odds that someone would come along and start checking barrels randomly was -

Even as he thought it, he realized the error in his thinking.

Tragically, it was too late. The top of the barrel came off and Sakurako looked down into it. "Found him!" she announced cheerfully.

Fate did not curse. He did however sometimes feel tempted. Like right then.

**To Be Continued**


	8. Kaede, Chachamaru

"I am not afraid of you," Fate said as he crouched in the barrel, looking steadily up at the three schoolgirls who confronted him.

"And we're not scared of you, either," Misa smoothly replied as she, Sakurako and Madoka looked steadily down at him while holding lacrosse sticks Sakurako had acquired for them. Misa and Madoka were using the long crosse, while Sakurako used her own short crosse.

"And yet you are the ones with the weapons," he noted.

"Weapons?" Misa asked with feigned confusion. She pointed at her stick. "Are you talking about this? This isn't a weapon. It's sportsgear. You couldn't hurt anyone with it, could you, Sakurako?"

"Are you kidding?" Sakurako asked. "Of course you could! You could really seriously mess someone up with these things! That's why we wear face guards and -"

"Saku," Misa interrupted in a strained tone. "What happened to backing my play?"

"I am not going to lie about my sport so that you can look cool," Sakurako said primly. "Lacrosse is serious business. It's Canada's National Summer Sport, you know!"

"... we're in Japan," Madoka observed.

"Which doesn't make anything I said untrue."

Her two teammates stared at her.

Fate coughed to draw their attention back to him. "In any event, given my circumstances, I'm not sure what you can possibly plan to take from me."

Misa smirked and held up her paper which had the words "Fate-sensei's Pride". Madoka, just a bit more hesitantly, held up a paper with the words "Fate-sensei's", followed by (in a clearly different font and the ink still wet) the word "Barrel".

"I see," Fate said, nodding. "Well, then. Get on with the humiliation. I can't do anything to resist you, at the moment. Show how mighty you are when confronting an opponent who is in no position to resist you."

"... good grief, but you deserve to be smacked for that sheer hypocrisy, Mr. Entrapment," Madoka retorted.

"Humiliated," Misa repeated, drumming her fingers against the rim of the barrel. "Is that what you think this event is about? Humiliating our teachers? Punishing them?"

"Well, obviously, that is exactly what this is about," Fate replied wearily. "And as for 'entrapment', Kugimiya-kun, that is the term for what happens when a law enforcer attempts to arrest an individual for an act suggested by that enforcer or another one with whom he or she is working in concert. When I informed you of the consequences of going to the entertainment facility - admittedly after you'd already done so - that was not entrapment, because  _you_  invited  _me_  to come with you. Not the other way around. I was not under any obligation to inform you of my true identity when you did so. Every aspect of our interactions has been completely within the letter of the rules governing teachers and students. I have been fulfilling my duties, and it is your misfortune to be in the charge of someone who is meticulous about observing the rules, rather than someone who will laughingly dismiss them if they see fit. In the real world, you will be confronted with situations that you cannot escape by flirting or joking with the authorities, and I have been trying to make you aware of that. Clearly, you are unwilling to learn."

Madoka started to make a blistering reply to that, but Misa, her face white and still, held up a hand. Madoka promptly subsided, though she continued to glare at Fate.

"Did you know that there's not a teacher on this campus who refuses to take part in this event?" she asked, very quietly, after a moment.

* * *

"I've got the locks, sir."

"Excellent, Shizuna-kun. Put them on the door," the headmaster advised. "Quickly, now."

* * *

"Did you know that none of them like being humiliated any more than you do? But they all take part, and they laugh about it later. Because they don't view being a teacher and dealing with students as a burden, a chore, or an odious responsibility that they just have to put with up so that they can stay close to their crush."

"Um, I'm pretty sure a  _few_  of them -" Sakurako started to interrupt.

"I do  _not_  have a crush -" Fate overpowered her with his own retort.

"WHAT. EVER." Misa crushed their interjections with the almighty universal counter of the teenaged girl. "You're right, Fate," she continued after a moment, deliberately dropping the '-sensei' and not replacing it with '-kun', '-san', or anything else. "This  _is_  pointless. Because the point of the exercise was to teach you a little humility ... and clearly, you are unwilling to learn." She sighed. "We're done here."

"... screw that noise, I'm taking the jerk's barrel," Madoka replied, and suited her actions to her words as she hefted it up and put it on her shoulder as she followed Misa away from Fate's crouched form.

Fate was, at that moment, distracted by the unfortunate change in his circumstances and his outrage that anyone would reduce his complicated emotional opinion of Negi, which was surely unique in all of human history, to the status of a mere crush. That explained why he didn't immediately notice the fact that Sakurako had not followed the other two cheerleaders in their unflinching walk away from him, but was rather standing just where she'd been, scowling down at him and tapping her foot. Eventually, of course, that drew his attention and he looked up at her.

"What?" he asked at last. "Do you have a pithy one-liner you intend to deliver to me as well?"

Sakurako stopped tapping her foot, opened her mouth ... then closed it, and shook her head. "Nope," she said. "Not smart enough for that." And with that declaration, she began to unbutton the collar of her T-shirt.

Fate blinked. "What are you doing?"

She'd reached down to grab the hem of the shirt by the time he asked, and gave him an irritable look. "Obviously, I'm squaring the circle. What does it look like I'm doing, bonehead?" With that, she pulled the shirt up over her head, revealing that she was wearing a bikini top underneath. Folding it up a bit, she held it in one hand as she began to unbutton her shorts.

"All right," Fate bit out. " _Why_  are you -"

"- wearing a bikini?" Sakurako interrupted as she skinned down the shorts to reveal that she wore matching bottoms. "Well, I don't really  _like_  it, but that's how every final match in the girl's lacrosse league is played. I think it's a little degrading to the sport, actually, but my opinion wasn't solicited. Anyway, here." And with that she held out the shirt and shorts for him to take.

He did not reach out to take them. Rather he looked up at her suspiciously. "Why are you doing this?"

Sakurako made a face. "Do I really need a reason?"

"It would make the situation more understandable," he replied.

"Well, gosh, that's such a priority of mine, your understanding," she answered, just a bit sarcastically. "Fine. You want a reason? Here's a reason. Doing this is what a good person would do for someone in your situation. And since I am a good person, and frankly a  _better_  person than you, I am doing it for you even though I am perfectly well aware that you would not do the same for me if our positions were reversed. Now put on the damn clothes so you don't have to run around naked all over the place. Sheesh!" she added for punctuation.

He did so, reluctantly.

* * *

"I am not certain this is safe," Fate mused a few moments later as he sat down at a cafe table.

"It's perfectly safe," Sakurako assured him from the other side of the table as she started to consult the menu. "The Scav hunt's been going on for a while now, right, and so by this point anyone who's after you is going to be thinking that you're in hiding. So by hiding in plain sight like this, the odds are good that you'll avoid them. Besides, you're in disguise, remember?"

"I remember," Fate said, as he touched the glasses with their phony nose and equally phony mustache. She'd coincidentally found them in a trashbin that they'd passed on the way here. "I'm sure that this will fool most everyone."

As though he hadn't spoken, Sakurako continued. "And of course, you're in no danger of being betrayed to anyone passing by unless the person with whom you're sitting gets annoyed with you and starts shouting 'hey there's the child teacher' or something like that." The key words were, of course,  _not_  delivered in a shout, but quietly. She took a certain pleasure in watching him flinch all the same. "So you might want to keep that person happy by trying to be nice to her. Just a helpful suggestion."

"This is blackmail," Fate declared.

"Uh-huh," she replied absently, back to studying the menu. "You're paying, you know."

His eyes narrowed. " _Why_  am I paying -"

She looked up and opened her mouth to shout.

"Ah, yes, of course."

Coolly and quietly, she added, "Also my wallet is in a pocket of the same shorts that are presently covering up your ass."

Fate opened his mouth to reply to that, and, uniquely in his experience, found himself unable to articulate a response.

"So, have you decided what you're having?" asked the waitress as she approached.

"I think I'll have a cappuccino freddo," Sakurako answered readily.

"Coffee. Black," Fate said without a glance at the waitress.

"You know, you really look like that Fate-sensei everyone's looking for," the waitress mused aloud. "Except for your nose and mustache of course. I'll have your order in just a moment."

"Wasn't that lucky?" Sakurako asked cheerfully.

* * *

As it happened, Sakurako was  _not_  lucky enough that everyone who happened to see her, sitting at a cafe table - in a bikini, remember, so she was attracting a fair amount of attention - in the company of someone who looked like Fate except for his glasses, nose and mustache, failed to draw the correct conclusion. On the other hand, the one person who saw them and did draw the correct conclusion also happened to have other things on her mind when she did so, and so chose to ignore them for the moment. So that was sort of lucky for her as well.

Not so much lucky for Konoka, however, who was the person with other things on her mind.

After she and the other explorers had crashed in on Negi and Fei's encounter, she had - with mixed feelings - chosen not to join in on the orgy which had ensued almost as soon as they'd revealed themselves to the post-coital couple. As Haruna, Nodoka and Yue's clothes flew through the air of the room, she had made a discreet exit, telling herself that she was going off in search of Setsuna to bring her back to join in - and knowing that she was actually lying to herself as she did so. Asuna had recruited Setsuna to act as a lookout as she went to do what she wanted to do with Takahata-sensei, and Konoka wasn't about to pull Setsuna off that duty just for something like this.

After all, she wanted Asuna to have everything she wanted before -  _it_  happened. But even that was something she was simply repeating to herself as a justification, not the truth.

The truth was that she wasn't sure that was the right thing anymore. When she'd been told about the plan that Asuna and Evangeline had devised, to debauch the entire class, Konoka had been thrilled. It was mischievous without being mean, and filled with potential fun. Sex was fun, in Konoka's view, and she saw nothing wrong with sharing it with everyone she cared about. (Well, not  _everyone_ , but anyone who wasn't off-limits due to her own moral values.)

And for a while, it had been just that, a whole lot of fun. But then, just the other day, she'd been watching Yue and Nodoka giving chilly glances to Haruna, and Pal giving them to Asakura and Sayo, and she'd started to wonder. And then, just now, she'd seen the humiliated and definitely very unhappy look that Fei had been giving the other girls as they burst in on her, and the wondering had gotten louder.

Maybe, just maybe, they should slow down a little. Not stop! She still wanted Asuna to have everything, after all. But they had plenty of time before graduation, after all ... they could surely afford to consolidate their gains without needing to continue to expand their collective. (Not a harem, a collective. Terminology was important.) But how to go about delicately broaching the subject with Asuna? That was a real question, wasn't it?

"Konoka?"

Yes, she could imagine Asuna saying that when she made the suggestion, saying her name in such a way as to suggest that she couldn't believe that it was her making it ... no, wait, that was more a general surprise, rather than a specific ... oh.

She turned and made an embarrassed face. "Hello, mother, I'm sorry, I was a little distracted just now."

"That's quite all right," Konoe Kouko assured her with a patient smile. "By any chance have you seen Nagi-kun recently?"

 _Yes, quite a bit of him,_  she almost answered. She chose instead to nod quickly and make affirmative noises.

"Ah, good. If you happen to see him again before I do, please let him know that he should come in for a follow-up about his condition. We've ... been in touch with some specialists and might have an idea to help determine just how long his condition ought to persist."

"I'll be sure and tell him ... though I have to wonder why you didn't just call his cell," Konoka asked.

"I did, dear, he's not answering my messages," Kouko said wearily. "I think he might not really be used to relying on a phone just yet. Your father was the same way when we finally got him to use a cell, I think he still has a few of my messages from years ago still sitting in its inbox that he's not yet heard."

"Mmm, I can imagine that he might not want to hear some of your old mess-umm," Konoka said and them dragged herself to a halt when she realized what she was saying out loud.

"What was that?" Kouko asked, face suddenly very still.

"I ... misspoke, sorry."

"No ... I don't think you get to claim that," her mother said, very slowly. "What was meant by that remark?"

At that moment, Konoka would cheerfully have welcomed any distraction, however dangerous or upsetting, that could get her out of this conversation. She looked about a bit wildly in hopes of finding one ...

And there.

In the midst of the crowd that was passing the two of them by as they stood on the sidewalk talking.

Standing quite still.

And  _smiling_.

Was a distraction more terrible than Konoka could have ever wanted.

"No," she whispered. "Mom!" she shouted, turning back to her mother.

"What?" Kouko asked, still upset but now genuinely startled by her daughter's obvious panic.

Konoka lifted an unsteady hand to point in the direction, but when she looked that way ... there was nothing. Just a crowd filled with people who weren't the sum of all her fears.

"What in the world is wrong?" Kouko demanded.

Konoka stared. It couldn't have been. She must have imagined it. It had to just be an illusion. It had to be.

* * *

"Have you calmed down, now?" Kouko asked warily. The two of them had made their way from the street to a nearby restaurant, where they'd taken a secluded table.

Konoka nodded as she sipped her juice. She was calm. She was. It had just been her imagination working overtime, and the fact that she'd felt the same way after exiting the library a few days ago proved nothing. Her nerves were overwrought, that's all.

"All right," her mother said. After a brief pause, she continued. "So about what you were saying before all that happened ..."

Konoka flinched. "I was just, you know, talking to fill the space in the conversation, since I didn't have anything to say."

Kouko smiled, nodded, and quietly said, "Don't kid a kidder, dear. I'm a politician who's been in the game longer than you've been alive. People who try to fill space don't back up on their words like that. You meant what you said."

Konoka looked away, pouting.

"Not gonna work on me, sweety," the older woman said firmly. "You think there's some kind of an estrangement between me and your father, don't you?"

"What am I supposed to think?" Konoka asked, at last. "When I went home on the class trip -"

"I was visiting some of our family's allies in Kyushu," Kouko interrupted. "When news reached me about what happened, I dropped that and came home just a little too late to get involved. I'm sorry if you feel I let you down -"

"You didn't let me down," Konoka groaned. "That's not what - since then," she continued, changing course in mid-stream and trying to regain a bit of momentum. "Since then, whenever I see you or Daddy ... well, that's just it, isn't it? I only ever see you or Daddy. You're never together. And I can tell that the fire has died in your relationship, you've become a couple of loving friends who stay together out of convenience. That's what happens when you grow complacent and bored after you stop living on the edge. There. That's what I was saying."

Kouko stared at her ... and slowly, a smile spread across her face.

"What?" Konoka asked, genuinely startled by that reaction.

"Konoka, dear ... I'm trying how best to tell you what I think about the nonsense you just spouted without descending to profanity, and it's not easy. Yes, the relationship between your father and I has become a little quieter, but the fire is still very much alive. And rest assured, if it were convenience either of us were after, the work we do in arranging our schedules would be greatly reduced if we didn't budget frequent sessions of private time with each other."

"But -"

"No," Kouko interrupted. "You've had your say, now listen to mine. You're fifteen years old. I admit that you've seen more of the world - the worlds - than I had when I was your age, but you aren't as wise beyond your years as you seem to think. In particular, you don't know about how an adult relationship works. If you've been lead to believe that it is or should be endless adventure and romance, I feel very sorry for you, because it won't work out that way. And you know, I don't think you'd want it to work out that way."

"I do," Konoka said fiercely. "I want action and adventure and really wild things. I want to live life to the fullest, not -"

"When you live on the edge, there's always the chance that you'll fall off," her mother interrupted.

"But it's worth it!"

"How can you know that if you haven't ever lived the other way?" Kouko, seeing that Konoka's jaw looked set, just sighed. "Fine. Live your life as it pleases you. I'd never try to stop you from doing that regardless. But don't use your father and I as an excuse for doing things you don't think we'd do, all right?"

* * *

"So how come you're such a jerk, anyway?" Sakurako abruptly asked.

Fate glared at her across the table. "I am not a jerk."

"Uh, yeah? You kinda are. There's lots of tough teachers in this school, but none of them are  _nearly_  as unpopular as you. And we're a pretty accepting bunch, so the problem must be on your side."

"Popularity is irrelevant to a teacher," he replied dismissively. "Only the opinions of the administration matter, and -"

"And you don't think  _they_  care what the students think?" Sakurako interjected. "And even if they don't, those same students can also complain to their parents and get them on the case. I take it back, you're not a jerk, you're just really seriously short-sighted."

"Excuse me?" said the boy who'd intended to destroy a world in order to preserve it and was now working on a space development project.

"You're short-sighted," Sakurako repeated. "You said you were trying to get us to think about the consequences of our actions, but you don't really think about the consequences of your own. No, seriously, you don't!" she snapped at his disgusted expression. "Let me give you an example. You were having a good time with us when we went to the karaoke box, weren't you? I mean, you didn't have to do as well as you did, and you didn't have to compliment my singing, either, if all you wanted to do was bust us for going out to places after curfew. You were having fun. Am I wrong?"

"You are not wrong," Fate allowed. "However -"

"However, by busting our chops the way that you did, you made it less likely that any of us would ever invite you to do that ever again," she smoothly seized control of the discussion again. "Was it really more fun to watch our reactions to being surprised like that than it would have been to go out with us who knows how many times? Or did you just not think it all the way through?"

"I -" he started to retort, but found it difficult to continue.

_Why the hell are you rejecting my boy's new idea without even hearing it out, you little prick?_

"Don't look down on humans," he muttered.

"Sorry?" Sakurako said, blinking. "I don't think I caught that. And if I did it really didn't make sense."

Fate sighed. "I am not Negi," he said at last.

"... I don't think anybody has ever mistaken you for him."

"That's not what I meant," he bit out. "Negi is, for whatever reason, content to drag you girls along with him on adventures that he - with abilities vastly greater than yours - found it difficult to survive. And yet he claims to care about you. I do not understand this. There are ... there are girls who came into my care. I tried everything I could to put them into safer places than the ones where I was, and I thought that I was being responsible. Yet Negi, with his army of ministra magi -"

"His what?" Sakurako asked, blinking a lot.

"His partners granted magical powers by kissing, consisting of roughly half of your class," Fate explained. "And they -"

"Negi-kun has kissed half the girls in our class?" Sakurako gasped, eyes wide.

"... this is why I find you all so very very annoying!" Fate growled.

There then ensued a brief montage of Fate explaining the pactio system as if to someone who'd never heard of it before (as one might do in a manga chapter intended to ease new readers into the flow of an long-running series, for example) and Sakurako asking several questions that surprised him with how insightful they were and only once or twice made him want to strangle her for completely missing the point of something he'd  _just said_.

"Wow," said Sakurako when it was over. "This magic stuff is really kinda cool."

"Yes, that is a disturbingly common attitude," Fate said with what might, in anyone less stoic and self-controlled, have been a sigh. In him it was simply an unusually loud exhalation.

She paid that tone no real attention, of course. "And you also had partners, like Negi-kun does?"

He closed his eyes. "Yes. Five out of the ... slightly larger number -"

"Larger like thirty-one?"

"I do not believe that information is at all pertinent. In any event, those five insisted on receiving a pactio and accompanying me in my struggles." It was not a total lie, and this girl had no need to know about the full details of his and Shiori's association, particularly since it was not especially different from his associations with the others. Simply more ... tied to the development of what he'd been forced to admit was a personality.

To his relief, Sakurako wasn't pressing him for details about the slightly larger number which she had somehow guessed with that disturbing luck of hers. Instead, she was looking at him in silence, with a pensive frown on her face.

"Do you miss them?" she asked at last. "Are you just a jerk because you're lonely?"

"I thought you'd concluded that I am unfortunately short-sighted, not a 'jerk', per se," Fate ground out.

"I'm changeable," she replied, waving a hand dismissively. "So?"

He closed his eyes and endured. "Yes," he said. "I do miss them. I communicate with them as frequently as I can, but it is not pleasant to consider that I will probably never see any of them ever again."

"Huh?" she invited him to elaborate.

Another louder-than-average exhalation. Why  _was_  he explaining himself, he wondered, as he glared at her? The sight of her bikini answered the question. It was probably beginning to be a bit chilly. No, definitely, not probably, he decided after another glance. "They received pardons for their role in the situation that led to all this, on the assumption that as minors they were not fully responsible for their actions. However, it is very unlikely that any of them would be considered as a candidate for a visa to visit your world ... and I cannot return, for my own parole is contingent on my remaining here until our project is completed. It is very likely that they will at best be elderly before I'm allowed to return. At best."

"Wow," Sakurako said. "That sucks. I mean, you kinda deserve it for the whole 'trying to destroy the world and kidnapping Asuna' thing, but ... well, I don't know these girls, but  _they_  probably don't deserve to never be able to see you again, if they like you and all that."

"Your sympathies are pointless," he said, looking away. "It is what it is."

"Uh-huh," she said with what was clearly a sigh, not simply a loud exhalation. "Hey, Fate-kun, did you happen to notice that it's been a lot longer than a half-hour since you got shot all those times?"

He blinked.

Then stood. "Excuse me. I will return your clothing at the earliest convenient opportunity, but now I must go and -"

"Do the same as you've always done and get the same as you've always gotten?" she asked blandly. "Or worse?"

He paused.

"There's a really really dirty joke about bears in the woods that I could repeat if you're still thinking about it," Sakurako added.

With what even he had to admit was a sigh, Fate sat down again. "More coffee," he said sourly. Then added, "Please."

* * *

Back at the dorms, Negi was sitting on the edge of the roof gazing out at the city and trying to figure out how to resolve the situation he'd gotten himself into this time. He could at least take some pleasure in the fact that he'd moved beyond sitting around feeling disgusted about himself and was trying to figure out a solution. That was progress. It was commendable

He'd honestly thought that a fight was about to break out, once the girls had shown themselves. He didn't want to think that it might have been better if it had, because he still thought fighting was wrong unless you were fighting for an important reason or if you needed some good exercise. Neither of which would have been the case in this instance. But what had happened instead -

_Yue and Nodoka exchanged annoyed looks with each other. Then Nodoka shook her head a bit, smiled at Fei and said, "Welcome to the harem." And began to pull off her t-shirt._

_"Ah?" said Fei, eyes gone all swirly._

_"Way to go, Nodoka!" Haruna cheered wildly as she began to get undressed herself. "Isn't it great to go beyond silly petty feelings like jealousy and spite and resentment and -"_

_"Haruna, I know that it will be difficult, but could you_  please  _shut up?" Yue growled as she undressed as well._

_"What?" asked Fei bewilderedly._

_Nodoka, now down to just her socks, almost danced across the floor to the side of her bed. "Now, Ku-san, I know that you're, well, not very smart - I hope I don't offend by calling you that."_

_"No, no offense taken," Fei said, blinking as Nodoka bent down over the two of them._

_"Ah, good. Anyway, you might be not very smart, but did you really think that you got there first?" Nodoka asked, trying to sound as patient as possible._

_Fei looked at Negi. Then at Nodoka. Then back at Negi. Then, slowly, she angled her perspective to take them both in. "Yes?" she said, in a way that implied she realized that this was in fact somewhat unlikely under the circumstances._

_"Well, you weren't. But it's all right, because we're going to share, and I'm sure that the many, many other girls -"_

_"There aren't that many," Negi interjected quietly._

_"- won't mind you joining either." And with that promise, Nodoka bent down to kiss the other girl's dark nipples, taking one of them into her mouth and -_

_"AHH!" Fei shrieked. "B-b-bookstore-chan?!"_

_"Share and share alike," Nodoka said, before moving over to the other nipple._

_"Okay, I'm calling dibs on Negi's negi right now, I didn't get nearly enough the other day," Haruna asserted. "The rest of you will just have to make do ... man it'd be convenient if we had another guy here ... hey, Konoka, why aren't you naked yet?"_

_"Um, I, uh, I think I'll be, um -"_

_Before she could conclude her response, if she had been about to do so, Haruna was distracted when Yue, making an incredibly loud growl for someone so small, grabbed Haruna by the hips, bit out the words, "Shut. UP," and pushed herself up high enough to slam her mouth against Haruna's. The tactic seemed to accomplish its goal, which was really all you could ask of any tactic._

_Meanwhile, Konoka slipped out, looking a bit disturbed ..._

The memory of that look on her face was still haunting Negi, even after he'd been with all four of the demanding young ladies who'd remained after Konoka departed. Had he hurt Konoka? Was he becoming the sort of person she'd warned him about, the awful playboy who made girls cry? If so, he had to put a stop to this right now, before it got any worse.

"Negi-dono. I believe that you and I must have words, now," came a voice from behind him.

 _It's about to get worse, isn't it?_  he thought with genuine annoyance.

"Negi-dono?" she repeated when he hadn't made any visible reaction to her announcement.

"Kaede-san, I think I warn you that, with only a handful of exceptions, every conversation or discussion that I've had with any of you in the last little while has ended in the exact same way," he said wearily as he turned around to look at her. At the moment that he did so, she was leaning slightly out of one of the shadows cast by the rooftop's access doorway.

"Really?" she said, frowning slightly. "They've all ended the way that your recent discussion with Ku-dono did?"

He nodded instinctively. Then, "You saw, then?"

"One chanced upon Ku-dono as she sat weeping over your injuries, having just lately fulfilled one's own role in our strategem and released Akira-dono some distance away. You recovered promptly, and -"

"Just a moment," Negi interrupted. "'Released Akira-san'?"

"That is not what one said," Kaede said honestly.

"What did you mean by what you did say?" he asked, frowning. "Did you do -"

"Rest at ease, no harm was done to her. You would be proud of her, however, for she attempted to warn Fate-sensei of our scheme, and this one was compelled to retrieve her and place her in custody that she could not do so."

Negi sighed. "Of course she did," he said, shaking her head. "She's such a good person, you should all learn from her example instead of - oh, never mind." He shook his head. "In any event, I suppose that you followed us back here, and watched through the window."

Kaede nodded, just once.

"Well, that's what's happened to my discussions with Asuna, Konoka, Setsuna, Chisame, Asakura, Sayo and Master, too, so you might want to take precautions."

Incredibly, her eyes opened almost completely as she looked at him, clearly amazed. "Indeed," she said. "Well. Thank you, Negi-dono. One appreciates the warning. However, I will trust in my training, and the serenity of my soul, to protect me from your seductive powers, which are clearly as formidable as any of your other faculties. For it is very important that I discuss this matter with you." Deep breath. "Negi-dono ... are you all right?" she asked.

Negi stared at her for a moment, before he dropped his head into his hands and began crying.

"Ohhh, dear, this was not part of the plan. Um ..." Kaede hemmed as she drew closer.

"I'm sorry!" Negi said through his sobs. "I'm sorry I implied you're not a good person, Kaede-san! You are! You're a very good person! It's me, me who's the bad person! I'm a heartless playboy who toys with girl's feelings while all the while all I care about is chasing after my father! Waaaaaaah!" he concluded.

"No one thinks you're a playboy! Well, all right, I suppose technically you fit the definition but -"

"Worst teacher ever! Worst  _person_  ever! Unfit to manage a computer forum, let alone a complicated project like space development!"

Kaede felt appalled as she stood there, watching one of the young men whom she'd most enjoyed watching blossom into wisdom and power now collapse in shame and self-condemnation. It was horrible. But, in her serenity, she found resolve. Once before he'd been driven into such despair, and she had helped him then. She would help him now. And the same tactics that worked last time would surely work again!

"Sensei," she said sternly.

"Yes?" he asked, raising his head.

She slammed the first two fingers of her right hand into a pressure point right between the eyebrows, sending him into blissful unconsciousness. It would never have worked if he had been defending himself even slightly, but one who dwells in the shadows prefers it if one's targets cannot do so. Having successfully incapacitated him, she packed him away into her cloak, and began to make her way towards the campus' boundaries.

* * *

Chachamaru, who had continued to monitor the Fate situation and was watching his 'date' with Sakurako with interest, abruptly tensed up. Her head turned in the direction of the dorms.

* * *

Yes, Negi decided once he was able to decide things once more, unconsciousness was starting to be a very tempting experience. It was a little disturbing, really. Was he going to start seeking out ways of rendering himself unconscious? Drugs probably wouldn't work, but maybe he might be able to talk Kaede-san into teaching him how to do that move she'd used, and then apply it to himself whenever he wanted to take a moment. No, that was awful, that would be just running away from his proble"ms.

Wow, when he expressed it that way, it sounded even better.

Well, be that as it may, he should probably find out his current circumstances. So he opened his eyes and found himself up to his neck in a large metal can filled with bubbling, mineral-scented water.  _Okayyyy,_ he thought.

"Ah, you are awake," said a familiar voice from behind him, right into his year.

It occurred to Negi, as he heard that voice, that there was something both soft and yet very firm pressed up against his back.  _Oh boyyyy,_  he thought. "Um, Kaede-san -"

"One was becoming concerned with how long it was taking you to wake up," her voice continued. "The thought of having overdone the pressure points was most troubling."

"Uh, yeah, but - um ... what do you mean overdone?"

"Well, in brief, you began to wake up less than three minutes after I first applied the technique, while we were still in motion. So I applied it again, and this seemed to quiet you. In the interests of keeping you sedated, however, I applied it several more times, at regular intervals. As a consequence, it has been nearly five minutes since I last applied it, and you are only now awakened."

"Hm. That's actually pretty typical. I don't think you did overdo it with that last one. It's more likely that you held back on the early ones," he suggested.

"Possibly," she agreed.

"Right ... um ... hang on, how are we both fitting in this tub? It was tight with both of us in here when I was -"

"It is a different can, slightly larger, in both diameter and depth. I procured it in hopes that ... well, such hopes as did not pan out. I am pleased that I am able to put it to good use by showing you that you can be alone with a woman of your acquaintance and not become sexually aroused, and thus put at rest your concerns about -"

"Um," Negi interrupted.

"What?" she asked.

With some difficulty, he turned around to look her in the eyes, rather sheepishly. "Um," he repeated.

"... oh dear."

* * *

Chachamaru Karakuri disliked forests. She had not formed a fond opinion of swampland, of desert, or of coastal areas, in her brief span of existence, but of the various forms of natural beauty she had encountered, she had quickly reached the conclusion that she had very little use for forests. If she flew above them, the trees provided cover for those for whom she was seeking, and flying below the treeline, as she was presently doing, presented its own problems. Unpleasant problems, she mused as one of the branches smacked her in the face. Again.

And she suspected that if she were to do the practical thing and burn the overgrowth to cinders, many people (and, she was aware, cute woodland animals) would be upset. Well, all right, the cute woodland animals would not really have the opportunity to be upset, which was, honestly, a little upsetting in and of itself. So, of course, she wouldn't do that. Even if it would make her life much easier, she mused as one of the branches smacked her in the face.  _Again._

None of that mattered, though, in the face of the stern duty she had to determine who had taken Negi-sensei out here, and what they wanted to do with him. Whoever had done so had to have possessed enough power to incapacitate him, which meant that they were vastly more powerful than Chachamaru herself. But that didn't matter either. If need be, her logs would allow others to determine the truth of what had happened regardless of her fate.

Negi-sensei needed her.

* * *

The tub had spilled over onto its side fairly quickly in the rather confused moments that had followed Negi's revelation, but neither of them had really noticed, having been far more consumed with the difficulties of attempting to devour each others mouths and rubbing one another all over. The water in the tub had turned the ground to mud, which meant that from attempting to purify themselves, they'd quickly moved on to becoming figuratively and literally dirty.

"By far," Kaede said, pulling her mouth back from his mouth as her right hand wrapped around his member and began rubbing. "By far, this is the worst plan one has ever developed. It has backfired utterly."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to mess up your plan, really I didn't," Negi said, kissing his way from her ear to her collarbone, and then down further to the tops of those magnificent breasts.

"Be not dismayed!" she groaned, her hand tightening around him as she felt his mouth on her. "One must learn from one's mistakes, after all. Besides which ... aw screw it," she said, completely dropping the old fashioned language. "Negi, I'm  _horny_ , and you're  _hot_ , so can we  _please_  just hurry up and fuck each others' brains out already?"

"Um, sure," Negi said, a bit stunned by how Kaede had just broken her usual persona.

"Oh, thank you!" Kaede said, pulling back and moving her head down to his unit. "I've been just about dying for some blugh glugh glugh," she explained, her last words more than a bit distorted by the fact that her tongue was a bit busy with other matters when she spoke.

He reeled with the sensations she was causing in him, yet they were not distracting enough that he couldn't realize that he was being terribly selfish by simply taking what she was giving him rather than repaying her in kind. He roused himself enough to reach out for her shapely hips, intending to pull her up into a position straddling his upper body so that he could reach down between her thighs and -

"No!" Kaede gasped, letting the dick fall from her mouth. "Don't! I'm just trying to get you ready, if you do that to me I'll go crazy!"

"Oh," said Negi. "My apologies."

She let out a sigh of relief ... that turned into a squeal. "Negiiiiiiii!"

Well, he mused, as he licked her very juicy vulva, she was already half-way there, so really ...

* * *

Mere moments later, having sufficiently lubricated his member with her spit and privately terrified that that she really would lose all self-control if he continued to lubricate  _her_  with his, Kaede pulled herself out of the sexually-charged sixty-nine - yes, we're going to keep calling it that, because the asshole we're parodying with it hasn't stopped either - and breathlessly declared, "We're going to do it, now, right?" Even as she spoke, she was moving herself around so that the straddling position left them face-to-face and lingam-to-yoni.

"Yes," Negi agreed, reaching out to rest his hands on her hips.

"No!" she said, sharply jerking those hips just a bit out of his grasp. "You don't just accept this. You  _take_  it. You claim it as your right, as my lord and master -"

"But I'm not," he said, sharply.

"Yes -"

"No," he interrupted, gripping her hips tightly, and this time she did not jerk away. "Your body and your soul are your own, to do with as you will. That you choose to share them with me is the greatest gift I can imagine, and one I probably do not deserve. But that is not my choice, and I will honor your choices. But I am no one's master ... not even, I think, my own."

She gazed down into his eyes, her own only open to a slit, as usual. "Oh, Negi," she said so softly. "There's humility and then there's self-abasement. I truly pray you learn the difference, soon. Meanwhile ..." And with that, she lowered herself and slid him up into her, momentarily reveling in the sensation of fullness before she began to rock back and forth upon him.

"N-no," Negi said, once he too recovered from the sensation of their union. "I'm not abasing -"

"Just shut up and fuck me already!"

"Yes ma'am." The irony of the demand wasn't wholly lost on him. He wondered if it was on her. Well, that didn't matter. But he had to admit that this particular position wasn't very comfortable, with the muddy ground and rock pressing into his back - not painful, for he was largely beyond pain, but  _pressure_  yet remained to him, and he was capable of finding certain kinds of pressure both comforting and otherwise. Well, he could correct the situation. It would just take a little planning, that was all.

There. Plan devised.

The first step was to push himself up as she pushed down, further in to her than he'd been going before. Her eyes involuntarily widened and she cried out at the deeper penetration, buying him the crucial moment of stillness on her part that he'd need for the next step.  _That_  involved rolling his upper body into a seated position, pressing their chests together as he also lifted up his knees so that they inclined against her buttocks. With one deep breath - not wholly necessary, but it seemed appropriate somehow - he pushed himself up to a standing position while still holding Kaede tightly against him.

"Aaaaaaaahhhh!" she cried out - whether from surprise, ecstasy, or a combination of the two; it wasn't clear.

While he could have continued just standing around and holding her like this, he suspected she wouldn't actually find the position all that comfortable. So instead, he quickly took a few steps and pushed her back up against the trunk of the nearest tree. "This is better," he told her, starting to thrust, his arms at the elbow hooking under her legs at the knee and holding them steady.

"Ah-hah, ah-hah, ah-hah," she gasped - whether in agreement, ecstasy, or a combination of the two; it wasn't clear.

Trees were wonderful. Trees should be treated as sacred.

* * *

If she didn't arrive at Negi-sensei's postion shortly, she was probably going to say 'to heck with it' and burn the forest down anyway, Chachamaru decided, as one of the branches smacked her in the face.  _Yet again._

* * *

" _Fuck me!_ " Kaede screeched. Their position had shifted slightly, with only one of her knees still hooked around his hip as he pounded against her. The other was resting against his shoulder, bent slightly in an attempt to throw her ankle around the back of his neck. It hadn't succeeded, of course, since she wasn't  _quite_  that flexible. It  _did_  allow him to penetrate her even more deeply, and let her grind her clitoris against his pubic bone. " _Fuck me fuck me fuck meee!_ "

He obliged her. It was honestly a bit disconcerting for him to see someone who usually seemed so self-controlled go so completely out of control, but there was a certain excitement in that, too. And of course, her own excitement excited him, too. In fact, he was so excited that - "Aghhh," he declared. "Coming, coming -"

"Outside!" Kaede snapped. "Out! Side!"

Oh, thank god, she was being smart about these things! He jerked back, grabbed hold of himself and sprayed the white liquid up against her abdomen. Her fingers came down to dab in the ejaculate, bringing it almost daintily up to her lips.

"Ah," she sighed. "Delicious. The next one goes inside."

"Uh ... doesn't that wreck the point of -" Negi started to ask.

"The point was that I wanted to see it," she answered.

"Oh."

Abruptly, there was a crashing noise from nearby.

"All right, you damned trees!" announced a familiar voice in a very unfamiliar tone. "That was a warning shot, now get out of my way or I'll -"

Negi peeked out from behind the tree. "Ch-Chachamaru-san?" he asked.

Hovering in mid-air and with her gym clothes torn up a bit, the most notable aspect of the gynoid's appearance was nevertheless the fact that all of her weapons were out.  _All_  of them, and the energy-discharging ones were glowing in that way which suggested that they could fire at a moment's notice.

Her face, screwed up in anger, eased in relief at the sight of Negi's head and shoulders. "Oh, sensei, thank goodness! I was beginning to think the trees must have kidnapped you! They're evil, you know," she added in the tone of one revealing a secret.

"The ... trees," Negi repeated. Quickly, he shook his head and spoke much more quickly. "No, no, I wasn't kidnapped. Well, technically, I guess that I  _was_ , but by, um, Kaede here," He turned to smile brightly at the ninja.

She arced an eyebrow at him.

"Say hi," he said quietly.

"One's position does not really permit one to wave or turn to greet her appropriately," Kaede said, wiggling her hips to remind him that his member was still inside her.

"Oh. Um."

Chachamaru had descended to the ground as they spoke, and a knowing look had settled on her face. "Ah," she said. "That would explain why I found your clothes scattered along the trail leading here, which concerned me a bit at first. I thought perhaps one of your abductors had discovered the tracer and -"

"You scattered my clothes along the trail?" Negi asked Kaede, startled.

"One was a bit rushed in setting up the bath which was one's original intent."

"Oh, that makes - wait a minute,  _tracer_?" He turned back to look at Chachamaru.

"A device incorporated into your clothing, so that I can be sure of your whereabouts at all times, the better to act as your assistant," she replied, with total innocence.

"Chachamaru!" Negi protested, pulling back from Kaede - who managed to regain her footing without any visible difficuly - and stomping over to where the other girl was standing. "That's inappropriate! A tracer in my clothes? Where did you -"

"Chisame-san suggested it," Chachamaru explained absently. Her attention was currently on other matters or she probably wouldn't have thrown Chisame under the bus like that. Probably.

"I don't believe this," Negi groaned, facepalming. "How could you possibly -"

He was cut off as Kaede's arms abruptly wrapped around him from behind, one over his chest, the other over - and its hand around - his semi-erect member. "Negi, my dear, you need to be a little more sensitive," she mumured into his ear. "Chachamaru-dono ... would you care to remove those damaged clothes and join us?"

"Eh?" Negi gasped.

"Eh?" Chachamaru repeated, just a bit more quietly.

"Negi," Kaede breathed into his ear. "Do you not think that Chachamaru is a beautiful girl?"

"Of course I do," he promptly replied. "She reminds - she  _is_  a beautiful young lady, and very charming and sweet, but -"

"And this seems to think so too," Kaede interjected, squeezing what she referred to as 'this'. "And clearly, Chachamaru-dono is attracted to you, as well, since - well, who isn't? And also there's the way that she has been reacting to the sight of your naked form just now."

"I-I-I-I," the gynoid stammered, her circuits overheating as they often did in confusing situations like this one.

"And for one's own part," Kaede said, then paused a moment to reflect. "Well, she is not the sort of girl one normally finds attractive, but she is certainly of the sort whom one would not eject from one's bed for the consumption of crackers there. So, Chachamaru? Art for or against it?"

Chachamaru shook her head as if to clear it, a humanizing gesture that was doubtless preprogrammed. "I am flattered - though also rather startled - by the invitation, Kaede-san, but what you are propositioning -"

"Proposing," Negi corrected reflexively.

"Thank you - proposing is something that cannot be." She closed her eyes. "I am not anatomically correct. Hakase has suggested adding such ... features ... in the past, but I have refused such notions, and so I cannot, even if I wished -"

"'If'?" Kaede repeated, very quietly, yet very firmly.

Chachamaru's eyes stayed closed for a few moments, before she finally opened them again. "No," she agreed. "Not if. But it does not matter, because -"

Kaede released her grip on Negi's member and stepped out from behind him. "My friend, you stress very unimportant matters," she said as she began to walk - no, to saunter - towards Chachamaru. "I see ten fingers and a mouth. Come to that, I see a pair of hips, and knees, and even underarms, all appropriately covered in flesh and sinew. The composition of that flesh matters not to me, and I can see no reason why it should matter to any who knows of the heart and soul that dwell within them. Of course, as Negi's countrymen might say, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. Thus -" she concluded as she arrived directly in front of Chachamaru, who had been standing in shocked silence, and only began to open her mouth to reply as the other girl pressed her naked form against her clothed form, and kissed her soundly.

"That's, that's more of an English saying than a Welsh one," Negi stammered as he watched this. "It's also, well, really centuries old and ... and ... oh my," he concluded as he realized that they were ignoring him.

At last, Kaede pulled back, gazing at Chachamaru through lidded eyes as she smiled widely. "And I perceive now a tongue, as well," she added, quietly.

"It," Chachamaru stammered. "It ... it is merely a fleshy temperature detector, so that I can determine if the tea is too hot for human consumption. It does not move as yours do, it does not -"

"Very, very unimportant matters," Kaede repeated, as her hands came up to press and squeeze the bosom hidden beneath the other girl's T-shirt, making her moan slightly. "Do you perceive my point? I perceive yours," she added, squeezing where the nipples would be.

"They, they are always like that -" Chachmaru explained for some reason.

"May I see?"

A moment of hesitation, and then Chachamaru reached down to grasp the shirt's hem and pull it up over her head. Beneath it, she was wearing a sports bra that seemed just a bit too small for her, to judge from the ease with which Kaede was able to scoop the breasts out of their cups and into her hands.

"May I taste?" Kaede asked in the same easy tone as she'd asked the other question.

Chachamaru closed her eyes and nodded.

Negi watched, just a trace dazedly, as Kaede kissed and caressed every inch of Chachamaru's slowly exposed form. It wasn't that he was terribly surprised by any of this; it wasn't that much different from what he'd watched Asuna and Konoka doing, or ... well, except that it was, as it was entirely one-sided, with Kaede doing things to Chachamaru while the other girl simply accepted them, passively. Like a doll. But he quickly jerked his head away from that line of thought. Because she was most certainly and definitely not a doll.

But perhaps he should speak up, say something about this. He opened his mouth to do so.

"She's almost ready for you," Kaede declared without looking back at him, as she gently brought Chachamaru down to the forest floor with her.

On the other hand, perhaps what he should do was to work on his timing. "Ready for me?" he repeated.

Kaede nodded as she slid the panties Chachamaru had been wearing down - actually, technically  _up_  at the moment - her knees. "Spread your hips, just a bit. There. Now she's ready."

With the panties off, he could see that, as she'd said, Chachamaru's lower area lacked all of the features of the female anatomy with which he'd become familiar in recent days. He could also see that she was blushing as he gazed, which made him flush as well. "Is this -" he began to say.

"It is," Kaede assured him. "Come here, Negi. She yearns for your touch. Don't you?"

"Yes," Chachamaru whispered. "More than anything else in the world." A beat. "Except possibly having every kitten in the world in a safe and loving home. Ideally but not necessarily mine." All this delivered in the same quiet whisper.

"You have oddly specific fantasies," Kaede informed her as Negi hesitantly approached. "But then, so do I. Down here, Negi. Place yourself here, between her legs."

"But there's -"

"Between her legs," Kaede repeated. "There, yes. Do you feel him there, Chachamaru?" she asked as she lifted the girl's legs up so that her shins rested against Negi's shoulders.

"Yes. I have ... 'nerves' there. I feel his, him, pressing against me."

"If you can feel pressure," Kaede pronounced, "then you can feel pleasure, as well. Close your hips around him ... and then, Negi, start moving."

"Ahhh!" Chachamaru declared a few moments later. "K-K-Kaede-san is wiiiiise!"

"Oh, say that more. Compliment me, praise me. And if you could imitate Mana's voice while you're doing so, that would be just  _perfect_  -"

The pressure of having his member clenched between Chachamaru's firm thighs, pressed tightly together, was not actually as comfortably tight as the vulvas of the various girls had been. But it did provide him with the resistance that he needed to get moving. From the look of transport on her face, she was clearly enjoying it as much if not more than he was, which helped quite a bit. And Negi was further stimulated by the sensations of Kaede pressed up against his back, reaching around to rub the nipples of his chest and licking and even biting at his ear. So it didn't take very long for him to be on the verge of climax.

By now it was habitual to announce that, so he did so. "Coming, coming," he declared breathlessly.

To his surprise, Kaede promptly reached forward to spread Chachamaru's legs so that he wasn't feeling quite as much pressure any more, then scooted around so that she was beside the startled gynoid. "On our faces," she said. "Do it on our faces."

"Excuse me?" said Chachamaru.

"W-wait," said Negi, teetering on the edge of the precipice and holding himself back with great difficulty. "Isn't that, well, degrading and -"

"Not when we ask for it, please, please, come on our faces!" Kaede asked, her eyes open and almost pleading.

"Chachamaru?" Negi asked, putting a full sentence of uncertainty in her name.

She hesitated almost imperceptibly. "It's all right, sensei," she said. "You may release in any way that suits you and -"

Kaede pushed both their faces forward, and at just the right moment.

"My," said Chachamaru a few seconds later, as white dripped from her cheeks and nose. "Isn't there a lot of it, though."

Kaede was smiling blissfully as her fingers went through the substance in her own face. "Yes, isn't it wonderful? You can lick it off me if you like. I would be happy to return the favor."

"Thank you, I believe that I will use a towel instead."

* * *

"You are insane," Fate declared stonily.

"And you are a jerk  _and_  fatally short-sighted, but I'm still listening to you, so how 'bout listening to me?" Sakurako replied steadily, chin on her hands and elbows on the table as she gazed across at him.

"I am listening to you," Fate retorted. "However, since what you are saying is insane, I find it somewhat difficult to do so without commenting on the fact that it is insane, and likely the product of a mind that is insane."

"So you're saying that I'd be in good company with the people you used to work for?" she asked.

"The correct preposition is 'with' and you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition," Fate replied.

"But I'm not wrong, am I?"

"... regardless of that -"

"I'm riiiight."

"... regardless of that -"

"Okay," Sakurako said, dropping her hands to her side and leaning back in her chair. "You don't have to admit that I'm right. Even though you know it and I know it and the girl at the register who probably wants us to leave so she can close up knows it. But come on, let's go over it one more time."

"Very well. You and the overwhelming majority of your classmates are ... nobodies. Unimportant hangers-on. A small, small handful have some potential which they have developed - Sakurazaki, Konoe, Tatsumiya,  _possibly_  Nagase and Ku. But the rest of you are completely unimportant, nothing more than distractions for Negi in his current state. You are unfit to be his partners with him, and any alliance that he would make with you would involve him protecting you far more than you assisting him. And the fact that all of the girls who have made a pactio with him have developed an artifact does not change this fact. It can easily be explained by reference to the fact that Negi is ridiculously powerful."

"Except that's bull," Sakurako said patiently. "And you know that it's bull, and you told me the fact that tells me that you know that it's bull."

"It is not, I do not, and I never did."

"Yes you did, yes you did, yes you did," she sang-song at him.

"What you tell me three times is not necessarily true," he growled. "If you insist on this point, then explain what you are talking about."

"Well, gee, since you went and asked me so nicely -"

"'Let's go over it one more time' is hardly the height of politesse."

Sakurako sighed and shook her head. Nonetheless, she generously decided to explain. "That girl Shiori. The one you told me about, the one who has a pactio with both you and Negi-kun. Can I just say that it's weird to think of some girl kissing both you and him? And you being mostly okay with it?"

"You have done so," Fate said flatly. "What about her?"

"Did she get an artifact from her pactio with Negi-kun?"

He stared at her in stony silence some more.

"Well?"

"She did not demonstrate the use of one during our last encounter," he finally answered.

"Is that a no?"

"It is a statement that she did not demonstrate the use of one during our last encounter."

"So that's a no."

"No, it is - she did not -" He abruptly just stopped talking and started looking really quite seriously annoyed.

"So this girl - this girl who  _did_  get an artifact from her pactio with you, and a pretty darn powerful one from what you've been telling me, did not get one from making a second pactio with someone you acknowledge as being way more powerful than you are."

"Not ...  _way_  more powerful," Fate replied.

"Fine, fine, a  _little_  more powerful. Doesn't matter, the point is this - Negi has managed to make artifacts for half the girls in our class where all you could manage to do were five. But still you can't admit that it might not be all Negi, that part of it might be us? That we're not just nobodies or hangers-on, that we might have potential you don't want to accept?" She leaned forward again, smiling in a rather nasty manner that she'd learned from Misa. "And the funniest part is, there's a simple way to test the theory. All you have to do is make a pactio with one of us that Negi hasn't pactio'd - Is that even a word? Whatever. - and see what happens."

"Oh, simple," Fate sneered. "Have you not noticed that your classmates despise me? None of them will volunteer to take part in such a procedure. You certainly wouldn't."

"Is that a challenge?" she asked, smile getting broader. "Are you challenging me? Are you?"

"Why not?" Fate said at last. "Yes, I am challenging you. I am daring you to make a pactio with me, and prove that you do not have any such hidden potentials that will allow you to manifest an artifact. And if you don't, you'll still be bound to me and have to work to support my authority in class." There, he thought smugly. She'll never go for that.

"... bring it on," she said, grinning madly.

* * *

 _What was I_  thinking _?_  Sakurako thought as she watched Fate quickly drawing the magic circle for the pactio around their table. She was careful not to let a note of the horrified wail that was her thoughts escape from her lips, or show on her face, but she could hear it and feel it quite clearly.

Once again, her inability to back down from a challenge was getting her into trouble, and this time it was far worse trouble than that even that thing with the gorgonzola souffle had caused her. She was going to have to k-k-kiss Fate-kun! (Yes, she really did stammer the verb in her thoughts.) And even if the last little while had led her to the conclusion that he wasn't quite as much of a jerk as she'd thought - rather an unhappy and lonely little boy who nonetheless had a mean-spirited sense of humor - the thought of her precious first kiss going to him was awful! And worse, even if she was proven right, she'd have to obey him like -

\- like -

_Hmmmmmmm._

Well, maybe it wasn't going to happen at all, she realized as she saw the counter clerk finally approach Fate. "Excuse me, we really do need to start closing, and ... well, I'm not sure what you're doing, but -"

"We are making a movie," he informed her without looking up.

The clerk blinked. "You are?" She looked around, unconsciously reaching up to make a minute adjustment to her hairstyle. "Where are the cameras?"

"They are hidden," Fate explained.

The clerk pursed her lips. "Um ... I think there's some sort of rule that you have to pay to use a location if they're filming there, isn't there?"

Fate finally looked up. "It has been arranged with your employers," he said. "I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate you bothering them for the details, but if you insist I could call them and -"

The girl finally backed off. "Oh, no, no, that wouldn't be necessary, I'm sure. Um ... just make your movie, then."

"Thank you, we will. Shiina?" he said, as he stood up and looked at her with that superior expression she hated so much.

"Okay," Sakurako said, walking up to him. "Last chance to back down," she added when she came up to him and dropped to her knees so that their faces were on the same level.

"I do not back down without good reason," he said smoothly.

She wanted to answer that, but it would really just delay the inevitable. Sakurako closed her eyes, imagined Madoka's face, and pushed forward to kiss Fate's lips, confident that he wasn't going to try anything like OH THAT LITTLE SHIT he WAS he WAS slipping her the tongue! Well ha ha ha, two could play at that game!

A few moments later, Sakurako finally felt that she'd made her point, and pulled back to see a card, depicting herself in her cheerleader outfit, hovering in mid-air surrounded by lights. She quickly reached out and grabbed it, bringing it close enough to read. "What does Hilaratrix Fortunans mean?" she asked.

"Cheerleader who brings good luck," Fate answered, seemingly unaffected by anything that had just happened.

"Huh. So how do I find out if -"

"OUT!" shrieked the clerk. "Both of you, OUT!"

"Ah, you are no doubt unsettled by the CGI you have just witnessed," Fate started to explain.

"CGI whatever!" she replied. "Ten year old boys kissing teenaged girls like that? What's wrong with you, you're disgusting, out, out!"

"My, but I feel lucky," Fate said dryly as he and Sakurako quickly departed.

"Oh shut up."

"That is hardly the obedient way that you should -"

"I will be every bit as obedient to you as the girls in our class are obedient towards Negi," she assured him, smirking. Fate made an annoyed sound, but good kisser or not, she wasn't about to back down now, either.

* * *

"Well," said Negi as he walked down the street, flanked on either side by Kaede and Chachamaru. "That was certainly interesting."

"Indeed," Chachamaru agreed, nodding once. "We have all learned some very interesting things this afternoon."

"Yes. I for one had no idea that you knew so much about bathing practices," Kaede observed to the gynoid.

"While my sister units generally handle such matters for my master and her guests, I receive backups of their memories in the same way that they receive backups of mine," Chachamaru explained. "That was actually the first time that I employed such information."

"I never would have guessed - wait, your sister units have your memories?" asked Kaede, frowning slightly. "Doesn't that mean that they are essentially -"

"No," Chachamaru interjected. "I have discussed the matter with them, and even my beta unit, the sister who was created immediately after me and served as Master's chief assistant during my absence, does not have the same emotional connections to the memories I have shared with her. To her they are simply data, much as her memories are simply data to me." Admittedly, it was possible that things would be different if she'd shared  _all_  of her memories, rather than reserving certain of them in locked archives which (now) not even Hakase could access. But now was not the time for such contemplations. Rather, she smiled gently at Negi and declared, "It seems that a person is more than the sum of their memories ... but then, you taught me that some time ago ... Master."

Kaede raised an eyebrow.

Negi just sighed. "Please don't call me that," he said in the tone of one who was repeating himself. "After all, I have learned a great deal from you as well."

"Really?"

"Yes. Just today I have learned not to be alone with you or Kaede when there are bathing implements nearby, because you'll wash me in ways that I really don't think the human form was ever meant to be washed."

Chachamaru shared an amused glance with Kaede, behind his head.

"Well, as strategies designed to keep you from coming to Fate-sensei's assistance go, this one worked out fairly well," Kaede observed cheerfully, just as the street where they were walking met an intersection with the one where Fate and Sakurako were walking.

"Wait, what?" Negi said, his momentary confused outrage giving way to surprise at the sight immediately before him.

"Good afternoon, Negi-kun. Nagase. Karakuri," Fate said icily. Then he took a deep breath. "It seems that I have been behaving very badly, recently, and I have clearly offended. For this, I am truly sorry, and I will strive to be a more merciful and compassionate teacher in the future." And he bowed politely to the two girls.

"Eh?" chorused just about everyone else present.

For her part, Sakurako was just standing there grinning, until it became too much for her to resist. "I got an artifact, I got an artifact!" she sang-song, holding up what was clearly a pactio card.

"Fate?" Negi yelped.

"I do not want to talk about it," he said.

"Fate-kun kissed me, Fate-kun kissed me!"

" _Fate?_ "

"I do not want to talk about it."

"Ahhh!" came a cry from the other side of the intersection, and before they could even glance in that direction, Konoka had run over to join them, and more specifically to give Sakurako a welcoming hug. "How cool! Congratulations, Sakurako-chan! What does yours do?" Her smile went slightly wicked. "And is it probationary or permanent?"

"It lets me make him eat dir- wait, what? Probawhatsit or permawhoosis?"

"Now, Konoka, don't be silly," Konoka's mother observed as she approached them. "Of course it would only be probationary, since there's no way that a girl your age would be making a permanent pactio. Right, Averruncus-san?" she said, managing to loom over Fate despite not being that much taller than Kaede.

He looked at her, annoyed, and then said, "Probationary."

"See?"

"What are you talking about?" Sakurako asked, bewildered.

"Fate," Negi growled. "You didn't explain the situation to her, did you?"

"I did. Certain details may have been omitted. It was a difficult situation."

"What was so difficult about me wanting to make you eat dirt?" Sakurako asked, bewildered.

"And the migraine is back," Negi said, rubbing his forehead.

* * *

High above them, on the rooftops, someone was watching.

"Well," said that someone, very softly. "What an interesting development. Fate-han is growing up! Brings a tear to my eye, it does, it does. I wonder whether he'll be as protective of his new partner as the cute boy teacher is of all of his. I suspect I'll find out, fairly soon." She laughed, then, quietly.

For Tsukuyomi found most things to be rather amusing.

* * *

On the ground below, Konoka shivered and told herself that she was imagining that faintly heard laughter.

**To Be Continued**


	9. Ayaka, Kotaro/Natsumi

A few days later, after the conclusion of the sports festival and the day off from school which followed it, generously ceded to allow students (and teachers) to recover from the previous days exertions, classes resumed, and 3-A gathered together in their classroom to see what was going to happen. Well, most of them gathered. The class representative and Chizuru were both absent - again - and so was Asuna - again - and Evangeline - again. Not all that surprising, particularly in contrast with the other absence, that of Konoka. Or at least, her absence was surprising when conjoined with the presence of Setsuna, who sat in her usual seat, face still and closed off, something in her posture suggesting that death would come on swift wings to anyone who asked her about Konoka's situation.

"So where's Konoka-san?" asked Makie.

Setsuna's hands clenched her desktop. "Makie-san," she said, as calmly as someone on the verge of berserk fury or possibly a nervous breakdown can speak. "Do you not perceive the subtle air of menace and doom which I am attempting to emote?"

Makie blinked, looked at Setsuna a bit more carefully. When she spoke again, it was a bit hesitantly. "You kinda look constipated. Is that what that subtle air thing is supposed to look like?"

"... both conditions would suggest an air of tension, so yes, I suppose that it would."

"Huh. Cool. I'll try to remember that. So, anyway, where's Konoka-san?"

"She is attending to her responsibilities somewhere else," Setsuna replied, and then the bell rang, indicating that class was about to start and granting a merciful release as Makie quickly headed back to her desk and away from Setsuna, thus saving both their lives.

"You should probably try to ease up a little," Mana observed as she sat beside her room-mate and seat-mate. "It's like we're back at the start of our second year again, when it comes to these moods of yours."

"Oh, the misty water-colored memories of the way we were," Setsuna replied sourly as she kept her eyes on the front of the room.

"Okay, that's a little different," Mana admitted.

Then the door opened and Fate walked in. Everyone held their breath. Well, almost everyone. Sakurako tensed up, but her breathing remained normal. She'd rehearsed this with him quite a bit the last night, but realized as she went to school today that she had no idea if he was going to stick to the script they'd worked out. So she was worried, but holding her breath, like everyone else, would have suggested too much of a lack of confidence in him, and he'd have noticed.

Fate stood at the lectern a moment, looking over the classroom full of girls, before he spoke. "I've already said this to one or two of you, but in retrospect I suppose that I should have waited until you were all assembled, like this." He paused, and went off script. "Except for the unexcused absences, but that was never in my control. Ahem. It seems that I have been behaving very badly, recently, and that I have clearly offended. For this, I am truly sorry, and I will strive to be a more merciful and compassionate teacher in the future. I understand why certain things that happened during the sports festival did so, and while I was very embarrassed by them, I will not hold these events against the perpetrators, or seek any vengeance." For a moment, it was like he was going to say something more, but then he closed his mouth on it, and simply offered a bow in the class' general direction.

A stupefied silence fell in the classroom. Whatever any of them had been expecting, this certainly wasn't it. Several of the girls - Misa, Yuna, and Haruna foremost among them - were giving Fate extremely skeptical looks, while Sakurako was smiling like a proud parent. Misa noticed this, and turned her skeptical expression in her teammate's direction, though Sakurako affected not to notice.

"Now," said Fate, patiently. "If you'll please retrieve your books, we'll begin today's lesson."

Almost in synchrony, the girls reached into their desks to do so.

Almost in synchrony, twenty-six cherry cream pies exploded up out of their desks and into their faces.

"Goodness," said Fate, who was certainly not smiling. "I wonder how  _that_  happened. I do hope it doesn't stain anyone's uniform. Now, on to page 27 ..."

 _It's a work in progress,_  Sakurako decided as she wiped cherry out of her eyebrows.

* * *

But that was all a day or so later.

On the morning immediately after the sports festival, Negi found himself being roused from his slumber - for he had prevailed on Kaede to teach him the pressure point combination she'd used on him, spent an hour studying and improving on it, and could now put himself out for four hours at a time - by the now-familiar sensation of someone's mouth around his member. He lifted his head from his pillow and looked down to see a large bump under the blanket that covered him, moving slightly, back and forth.

Somewhat involuntarily, he smiled. But then his mental schedule kicked him in the metaphorical back of the pants, and he shook his head. "Asuna, we don't have time for this, this morning," he told the bump as he reached down to tug the blanket out of the way. "I've got that doctor's appointment, and then we both have to go to Iinchou's to -"

The blanket came away, revealing a set of purple hair and locks that almost covered up a pair of eyes that were gazing up at him with obvious amusement. "Fufufu," she 'laughed' as she went down on him further, her tongue licking at his testicles as she drew him up into her throat.

"N-Nodoka?!" Negi gasped.

A sigh came from Negi' side and he quickly turned to see Asuna lying - every bit as naked as Nodoka - beside his futon. "I guess you were right, he really  _isn't_  sensitive enough to figure out who's doing it to him. I wonder if I should be just a tad bit upset about that, Negi," she said, mock-frowning at him. "You cost me a Coke!"

Negi swallowed, both from the sensations he was experiencing and confused embarrassment. "You bet a Coke on whether or not I would be able to tell -"

Asuna interrupted him with a kiss. "Would you rather I'd bet money?" she asked when she pulled back, a tiny silver line of spit connecting their mouths even as she spoke. "Would that be more conducive to your self-esteem?"

His jaw worked, breaking the line, before he just sighed. "Well, no, but ... but, what I said is still true, I've got that appointment and then we've got to -"

"Oh, it'll be okay," Asuna soothed him as she kissed her way down his chest, to join Nodoka and begin an attempt to persuade the other girl to relinquish her grip on the dick through kisses to her cheek and, after a moment, her lips as well. "We can reschedule the appointment - it's not like they're going to pass up a chance to examine you, now are they? And if it should happen that it gets delayed long enough that we have to give Iinchou our apologies and not actually go to her house, welll -" She broke off as the tip of Negi's dick finally emerged from Nodoka's mouth, and she swooped down on it herself.

"That's not - mmmnnnn," Negi replied.

Nodoka shook her head as she gazed down at Asuna, admiring her technique which was clearly far more advanced than her own. "I wonder if this is what it was like," she mused as she ran a hand down Asuna's back, reaching for her butt with some fingers. Asuna moaned but didn't let go. "For my friends, I mean, watching me being all shy around you," she continued, glancing up at Negi. "Wasting so much precious time."

Asuna frowned despite her enjoyment of what she was doing. That ... hit a little close to home.

"That's not going to happen," Negi said, regaining the thread of what he'd been trying to say earlier. "I'm not going to be late for my appointment. I'll, I'll take care of you two girls and -"

"And what about Yue and Chachamaru-san?" Nodoka asked.

"I have already rescheduled the appointment for somewhat later," announced Chachamaru's voice from a bit outside Negi's field of vision. "Please do not reply to this statement, as it is a recording made so that I need not interrupt the use of my lips on Yue-san."

"AAAAAAH!" cried Yue's voice from much the same direction.

Negi gave up.

Temporarily, at least.

* * *

Eventually, Negi got to go to the doctor. Just as eventually, he got finished there, and walked out beside Kotaro (in grown-up form himself) to meet Asuna as she waited just outside the office building's doors.

"So?" she asked.

"Three months," he said, cutting to the chase. "Their best estimate is three months for the effect to work it's way out of my system, and they don't have a way to speed the process up." He grimaced. "And given that developing one would put a pretty effective weapon in the hands of anyone who opposes me, as it'd work on  _anything_  I turn into a Complexio, I'm not entirely keen on that particular line of research."

"I suppose you wouldn't be," Asuna agreed. She glanced curiously at Kotaro. "Why were you there?"

The dog-boy shrugged. "They wanted a baseline of how this crap is supposed to work to compare against the way it's working with him," he answered.

"And they picked you as a baseline?" Asuna said, obviously checking him out.

"Oy!" he replied, ducking behind Negi. "None of that!" As he protested, Kotaro quickly realized that Negi was giving him a moderately unamused expression. "Oh, what?" he groaned. "You said there was no hard feelings!"

"I may," Negi said coolly, "have been slightly exaggerating."

"Aw, come on!"

"Yeah, Negi, come on!" Asuna agreed. "Think of it as a way of deepening your friendship! Now you're Eskimo brothers!"

"Yeah, now we're - what?" Kotaro broke off, blinking. "What the heck are Eskimos?"

"They're a people who live in the northern regions of Canada and the United States," Negi explained, now giving Asuna a bit of an unamused look. "They prefer the terms Inuit, Aleut and Yupik, actually."

"Oh, those guys." Pause. "What the heck does that have to do with -"

"In fact," continued Asuna, boldly ignoring this entire digression as she sauntered up to stand between the two of them, a hand on each of their shoulders, "I bet that if we put our minds and other aspects of our anatomy together, we can come up with lots of ways to deepen your friendship even further! And if by chance doing so means that we end up being way too late to go a certain obnoxious class representative's dream house, well, that just can't be -"

"Cough, cough," rasped a voice from nearby.

Asuna froze, then turned to look, relaxingly slightly when she saw who it was. "Oh, hey, Natsumi-chan. Slap anybody around today?"

"It's early in the day," said Natsumi, frowning. It was very tempting to say that she expressed herself  _by_  frowning, but we won't.

Kotaro jerked out of Asuna's semi-embrace, face going pallid as he turned to look at Natsumi. "Na-Na-Natsumi-nechan!" he stammered.

"Kotaro-kun," she said, glaring. Again, it was very tempting to say that she  _glared_  those words, but we won't.

He forced himself to calm down. "Natsumi-nechan ... I'm really, really sorry."

"Yes, you are."

He let that slide. "I done wrong. I admit it. And, y'know, I realize that it's gonna be hard to fix this. Trust is gonna be hard to rebuild. We will have to learn if we're still the same people we were and actually can we just skip all that?"

"No!" Natsumi snapped, storming forward to grab ahold of his earlobe. "We are going to have words, you and I! Lots and lots of words! If you'll excuse me, the two of us are gonna go off and have words! Actually, even if you won't excuse me, the two of us are  _still_  gonna go off and have words!"

Negi felt moved to offer some assistance to his friend and rival, hard feelings or not. "Um, Natsumi-san, I hope that you won't be too hard on -"

"Butt out, sensei."

"All right then." There were limits, after all.

He and Asuna watched Natsumi basically dragging Kotaro off.

"That girl has some moves," Asuna said admiringly. She looked speculatively at Negi's earlobe.

"Don't even  _think_  about it. We're going to Iinchou's house now."

"Dammit."

* * *

"Ow," Kotaro said, rubbing his earlobe. Natsumi had let go of him once they reached a secluded nook in back alley Mahora.

He wasn't expecting any sympathy. He was, to some degree, expecting comments like, 'Oh suck it up, you big baby,' and/or 'Like I could really hurt you by doing that'. He definitely wasn't expecting what he got, which was silence and a frosty glare that ... honestly was nowhere nearly as intimidating as Natsumi probably wanted it to be, particularly considering the effect that Chizuru's saintly smile had on both of them.

It did still make him uncomfortable, though. So he sought to fill the silence. "Y'know, for someone who declared she was gonna have words with me, I'm not actually hearing a lot of -"

"I'm waiting for something," Natsumi interrupted.

"What?" he asked, reverting to his younger form half-way through the word.

"'What?'" she repeated, shaking her head and muttering indistinctly for a few moments. Then, after a deep breath, she continued, sounding much less tense and angry. "Are you all right?"

"Uh ... yeah," Kotaro admitted. "The earlobe doesn't hurt at all, anymore. I guess the shapechange -"

Like the dew in the morning, so vanished Natsumi's calm. "I'm not even remotely talking about your ear, you idiot! I know perfectly well that I couldn't hurt you like that! Agggh!"

Well, things were a little out of order, but he was back on somewhat familiar ground. And yet strangely, it didn't help. Man, there were times he wished he could just break down and cry unmanly tears. "Well, what do you mean, then?" he whined.

"I mean what I mean!" Natsumi retorted. "Are you all right? The last time I saw you - aside from ...  _that_  episode - you were running out of our room looking like you were scared beyond belief! Since then, I haven't seen you at all - aside from ...  _that_  episode - and I've been worried sick about where you were and what was happening to you!" It was a little disturbing how she could go from angry yet concerned to icily furious in under a second when she spoke of ...  _that_  episode. "You didn't leave a note! You didn't call! And until ...  _that_  episode ... I couldn't get any answers out of Chizu-ne and since then I haven't  _wanted_  to talk to her!"

"It wasn't her fault," Kotaro weakly defended his alpha.

"I don't  _care_  whose fault it was! God, now you've got me acting like a parental role-model!" Natsumi cried, holding her hands to the side of her head. "Where were you? What happened to you? These are the things that you would be telling me now if you didn't want me to get even angrier than I already was!"

"... well, for a while I went an' hid out at the shrine, and then I came back and ... um, well,  _that_  episode happened." He saw her start to bristle at his misappropriation of her terminology and, though he thought it monstrously unfair, he hurried on with his narration. "After that, I sorta hung out at Negi's for a while, and ... well, that's it." He briefly considered confessing everything that had happened, in hopes of spreading some of her fury around on Asuna and Chisame and ... well, but that was an unworthy thought. He was gonna take his lumps like a man.

"And the notion of asking Asuna or Konoka or Negi-sensei to let me know what was happening didn't occur to you because  _why_?"

"... 'cause I'm a dumbass?" he supplied what he thought was the right answer.

"Accurate but not good enough!" Natsumi roared.

"Okay," Kotaro said, covering his face with his hands. "I get it. I screwed up, and you hate me now. I get it. An' I know 'I'm sorry' won't cut it, but -"

"What?" Natsumi gasped. "Kotaro-kun ... what - how - nyaaaaargh!" she growled. "God, I wish I could pull off twin-tails so that I'd have something to  _pull_  in situations like this!" she howled at the sky.

"Huh?" said Kotaro, peeking out between his fingers.

"Kotaro-kun, do you seriously think that I'd be this worried or upset over someone I hated?" Natsumi cried. "I am very very very very and a few more verys angry at you right now, but I don't hate you - aggggh, dumbass! I love you, stupid!"

"Dwa?" said Kotaro.

"Aggggh!" Natsumi cried, shaking her head furiously. "It's bad enough you made me say it, but now you also have to act with dull incomprehension when I do? Satsuki-san, this is working out just like I thought it would!"

Kotaro blinked. "Satsuki-san? What, what does she have to do with this?" he asked, seizing on the one part of the bizarre situation that  _didn't_  leave him utterly bewildered, instead just vaguely confused.

"What does she have to do with - hello? She was there that night, or have you just blocked everything else out?" Natsumi snapped.

"No, no, I just ... she didn't say anything and -"

"She didn't say anything to  _you_ ," Natsumi corrected, and then her anger seemed to subside a little, and she spoke a little more calmly. "She didn't say anything to me, either, not then. But ... later, a day or so later, when she saw how I was acting around Chizu-ne, she came over to talk with me. And she asked me ... asked me if I was angry at Chizu-ne because she'd had sex with you or because you'd had sex with her instead of me."

"Uh," said Kotaro, who honestly couldn't see the difference between the two statements. "And ... what did you say to that?" he asked, since she'd just fallen silent after that statement, and was staring at the ground.

It got her to lift her head, at least, and glare at him. "Obviously, I said that there wasn't any difference between the two statements," she snapped. And then again, she subsided. "But I was lying. And she knew that I was lying. I was mad at Chizu-ne because she'd had sex with you instead of me ... and I wanted to be the one you were having sex with, instead of her. Agggh, it sounds even worse when I say it out loud!" she groaned.

"So ... so are you saying that you -"

"Don't be so oblivious!"

"Okay, yes, clearly, that's what you are saying ... um ... o-okay?"

She glared. "Okay, as in you understand what I was saying despite being a dumbass, or okay as in you want to have sex? With me?"

"The latter one of those," Kotaro quickly clarified. "Well, I guess you could say that the first one is true, too, but, mostly, the latter." He grinned nervously.

She didn't grin back. She didn't so much as smile. "Okay," she said, nodding. "Okay, then. We are going to have sex. Um. But there are conditions!"

"I'm good with conditions," Kotaro said, nodding rapidly.

"Condition number one ... you're not allowed to have sex with anybody else, ever again!"

"... I'm good with that!" he assured her. Honestly, he was a little bit skeptical of his ability to hold to that promise, considering the crazy situations that kept happening to him and Negi. But he was gonna try, and after all, she would -

"Condition number two ... I get to cheat on you! At least once!"

"Huh?" he gasped.

"You were with Chizu-ne, remember?" Natsumi said in a tone aiming for menacing and missing just a bit. "Did you already forget?"

"Well, no, but that's not -"

"It was cheating on me, retroactively! So ... I'm going to be cheating on you, at least once, proactively ... to balance the scales!" She nodded, sharply.

And all at once, Kotaro experienced a flash of understanding. He wasn't sure why he got it, but right at that moment, he understood why Natsumi was doing what she was doing - or rather, he understood that she really had no idea what she was doing. She was just making it up as she went.

It was the sort of thing he'd do. It was  _exactly_  the sort of thing he'd do. It was ... really sweet.

"Okay," he said gently, and reached to take her into an embrace. She stiffened at his touch, and for a second he thought he might have gone too far too soon, and then she eased up and bent down to press her lips to his.

Moments later, Kotaro's head was pressed back against the wall of the building as he looked down at Natsumi's head moving back and forth as she licked and sucked on his erection. It was dizzying, really. She hadn't even bothered to build up to it, she'd just dropped down to her knees, unzipped his pants and gone to town. It made him wonder, and the wondering made him speak. "Nnnnatasumi-chan," he gasped as he finally broke out of a moan. "H-how did you learn to do this?"

Unfortunately, that was another one of those questions, innocently asked, which had unfortunate implications which he clearly didn't realize. Natsumi pulled back, leaving him hanging in air, and glared up at him. "I just know stuff, okay?  _Okay?_ " she snapped.

"Okay," Kotaro peeped.

"Well, good!" she said, as she went back to sucking him. She was not about to admit that after they'd gotten back, she'd casually asked Haruna to discreetly supply her with some shota manga by convincing her that they were for Ayaka. She'd felt terribly guilty about doing that, because it exploited the Class Representative's unfair reputation and certainly not because of the dizzy haze from which she'd emerged with sticky hands after reading them. So of course she couldn't tell him about it. Ever.

Eventually, she judged that he was hard enough - his thing now resembling the whited-out spaces which represented boys' things in the manga - and wet enough that she was confident about moving on to the next step. She'd considered having him lick her as a further preparatory step, but the way that the girls always screamed about how they were going crazy from having that done to them frightened her. So it was probably best to just move forward quickly.

"Okay," she said, standing up and lifting up her skirt. "Okay, for the next part -"

"I got this," he told her, ducked down to grab hold of her panties and pull them down, then pushed his face up into her crotch.

"Agh!" she cried at the touch of his tongue against her clitoris. "No! I'm gonna go crazy!"

"Huh?" Kotaro asked, jerking back to look up at her with a startled expression. "I didn't even do anything yet."

"Ummm," Natsumi temporized as she fought to push down her blush with difficulty. "Just, just skip that part, okay?"

Women were just incomprehensible, Kotaro decided. Chizu-ne, Asuna, Chisame, they'd all seemed to like that, but apparently Natsumi thought it was unpleasant enough to drive her insane. How she knew that from a few seconds confused him, but if that's the way that she thought, he shouldn't try and argue the point. He knew it wouldn't work.

"Um, okay," he said, as he got up. "But ... this is gonna be a little awkward. Maybe it'd be better if I changed into -"

"It's not like you have some of those pills in your back pocket, now is it?" Natsumi replied sharply.

Actually, it was exactly like that. "Ummmm."

"So there's no point, we'll work it out," she said quickly. She didn't want him changing back! She'd studied shota, not regular boy-girl sex! They were bound to be completely different! And she wasn't prepared. You couldn't expect good results from changing the script half-way through the performance of a play, now could you? "Just, uh, stand there, and I'll, well, I'll do this." She put her back against the wall, then slid down until she was squatting, flinching at the feeling of the building's stonework rubbing against her back through her shirt, to say nothing of the tension in her hips, knees and ankles.

But the position brought her crotch so that it was level with his, allowing him to push forward and into her. She let out a strangled gasp when he did so.

"Did I hurt you? Did I hurt you?" he asked a bit frantically.

"No!" she lied. "It's just surprising, that's all. Now ... get to work!"

"Yes ma'am."

* * *

"Um, boss?" said one of the laundry workers. "I was heading out into the alley to have a smoke, and there's a couple of kids having sex against the back wall. Should I chase 'em off?"

"What's wrong with you?" asked his employer. "They're young and in love! If you were that age, and you was with a girl you liked, how'd you like it if some old fart chased you off?"

It occurred to him that he should possibly have noted one of the oddities of the pairing he'd observed. "Um, but boss -"

"But nothing! Get back to work!"

"You didn't happen to take pictures, did you?" another of the workers said, in a low tone.

The others turned aghast looks at him.

"I didn't say anything!" he quickly said, then went back to work.

* * *

" **Welcome to the Yukihiro household, Negi-sensei and Asuna-himesama,** " chorused a dozen or so black-clad maids in carefully rehearsed unison. If any of them experienced any cognitive dissonance over calling someone 'himesama' when they had, a year or so earlier, been instructed to refer to her as 'gorilla woman', it wasn't apparent on their faces.

That was all right, though, because Asuna was clearly experiencing enough of it for all of them combined. "Please can I hit her this time,  _please_?" she asked through gritted teeth.

"No," Negi said firmly. "We can't do that sort of thing anymore."

"I'll hold back so I don't kill her, just hurt her really  _really_  bad," Asuna promised.

"Asuna."

Fortunately for Negi's headache - in the short term, at least - Ayaka chose that moment to make her entrance, high at the top of the foyer's staircase, resplendent in a dazzling white dress which managed to suggest both a wedding dress and a fairy queen's costume without looking quite like either of them. "Ah, I see that our guests have at last arrived," she declared as she began to walk down the stairs ever so slowly.

"Trip," Asuna muttered, each time the class representative took a step. "Trip."

"Stop that," Negi muttered.

"Is something the matter, Asuna-san?" Ayaka asked cheerfully as she descended yet another stair. "You seem somewhat disconcerted."

"That's a good word for it," Asuna replied, finally lifting her voice. "I told you that I hate it when I get treated like that, over and over again I told you that, and what do your maids do?"

Ayaka paused, and lifted a hand to her mouth. "Gasp!" she gasped. "Do you mean to tell me that they did so, despite my deliberate and specific instructions against doing so? Is this true?" she added, glancing down at the still-assembled maids.

The foremost maid - Negi realized with a start that he'd never bothered to learn any of their names, despite the fact that several of them had shown up on campus from time to time and even visited his room in Ayaka's company - took a step forward. When she spoke, it was with the tone of one who was clearly aware that she was being thrown under the bus, and had in fact been thrown under the bus so many times as to grow accustomed to the sight of its chassis. "We apologize, ojousama and Asuna-sama. Our enthusiasm sadly got the better of us."

"And there you have it," said Ayaka, taking another step down as she did so.

"Oh, bullroar! How would they even know about any of that if you didn't tell them?" Asuna demanded, glaring in the maids' direction ... and abruptly doing a double-take.

"You're imagining things," Ayaka said dismissively, as she finally arrived at the ground floor and began to sweep across it towards them. "There are many ways they could have learned without my telling them. Far too many ways to discuss, when dinner awaits!"

"Uh," said Asuna. "Right."

Negi noted her abrupt change in attitude, but as they were being ushered along to the dining room, there wasn't any time for him to do anything except shoot Asuna a quizzical glance, which she answered with a quick shake of her head. Whatever had provoked it, then, was going to remain a mystery for a while.

"Y'know, considering that every time I come here, you lay out a spread like this, I really have to wonder how the heck you manage to stay in shape," Asuna observed as they were led into the dining room where (as her words would suggest) a feast was laid out on the dining room table, steam rising from the plates and trays.

That managed to crack Ayaka's up-to-then impermeable air of good cheer. "I do not eat like this  _all the time_ , Asuna-san! Honestly, the ideas that come flying out of your mouth sometimes! This is a special occasion! It is the first visit of Negi-sensei to my humble abode since our forbidden union was formalized!"

Asuna noticed the maids exchanging a weary look, but before she could comment on it, one of them - gah, what  _were_  their names, anyway? - spoke up, trying (and, to be honest, failing) to sound like she wasn't delivering a rehearsed line. "Forbidden union, oujosama? What in the world are you talking about?"

"Ah, yes, the tale of my forbidden love with Negi-sensei -" Ayaka began to orate.

And then Asuna saw all, and her jaw dropped. "Oh god no, you're not going to do it again, are you? The interpretative dance and everything? Come on, seriously?"

"Interpretative dance?" Negi repeated. "What - oh, that," he concluded, remembering, now.

"- and how it was at last -" Ayaka continued, paying no mind to any of this.

"No, nuh-uh, nix, not doing this again, and I'm sure your maids have already heard all this and don't really want to hear it again either," Asuna interrupted.

Ayaka glanced at the maids, who did their best not to meet her eyes. "I'm sure they're all quite happy to -" she began to say.

Asuna held a hand up in front of Ayaka's eyes. "Okay, hands up everyone who doesn't want to - wow, that was fast," she said as hands went up all around the room.

 _Thank you, Asuna-himesama,_  mouthed one of the younger maids.

 _Don't call me thaaaaaat!_  Asuna mouthed right back. She glanced at Negi, who'd been watching all this a bit dazedly and whose hand was conspicuously  _not_  raised, then lowered her hand from Ayaka's eyes. "Okay, not every hand went up," she said, deliberately looking in the direction of a certain maid. "But enough did that I think we can declare a plurality."

"But ... but my  _dance_ ," Ayaka protested, looking truly wounded.

"Some other time, maybe," Asuna said. "But not right now. Right now, there's something important that we need to discuss."

Despite the wackiness of the situation, Negi found himself feeling proud of Asuna. She hadn't wanted to do this, but now that it was come to it, she was going to tell the class representative the truth about her situation and -

"What happened to that room with all the toys in it?" Asuna demanded.

\- and he really should have known better, shouldn't he?

Ayaka blinked. "How in the world did you know about that?"

Asuna was honestly tempted to say 'you just told me'. "When I looked at your maids, back in the hall, I happened to see the window of that room, and even though I couldn't see everything, I could tell that some of the toys that were hanging on the wall had been taken down. There's no reason to do that ... unless you've cleaned the whole thing out! What gives?"

Ayaka glanced away. It was an unspoken signal, for the maids began to silently and swiftly exit the room as she spoke. "Your eyesight has gotten even better, apparently."

"All sorts of things have gotten better! My patience isn't one of them!"

"Is this true, Iinchou?" Negi asked, both because he was both startled and curious, and because he thought they'd probably catch more flies with sugar. "Did you -"

Ayaka sighed. "You are both making something of ... well, not nothing, but very little. After you were here a few months ago, Negi-sensei, and had so much fun playing in that room -"

"Time out," Asuna interrupted. "You actually got him to play? How in the world did you manage that?"

Ayaka gave her a sly look. "I can't really approve of you prying into others' affairs like that, Asuna-san, but if you insist -"

"Oh come on, you can't have interpretative dances for everything! What happened?" Asuna quickly asked Negi.

"There were dinosaur toys," Negi answered, looking more than a bit embarrassed.

"Ah."

Artistic impulses momentarily stymied, Ayaka continued, a bit more brusquely. "In any event, the next time I found myself passing by the room, I couldn't help but notice how ... sad, and empty, too, it seemed, now that it had finally had a little boy playing with the toys therein. It seemed such a waste. So, with a bit of help from Chizuru-san, I arranged for them to be donated to some charities that provide toys for children whose parents can afford them, especially those who are sick and in hospitals. A fair chunk of them went to that orphanage on the outskirts of town. I'm sure that they appreciated them." She shrugged. "So, shall we sit down to eat?"

"Shall we sit down to - you can't just drop a bombshell like that and then sit down to eat!" Asuna protested.

"I'm actually starting to feel a bit peckish," Negi confessed.

"Negi! Be startled by this!"

"I really don't see what the big deal is," Ayaka said, sounding genuinely bewildered at Asuna's own bewilderment. "You knew that I donate to several charities, and this is just a logical extension of that -"

"The hell it is! Those were your -" She broke off in mid-sentence, looking frustrated and ashamed.

Ayaka drew in a deep breath. "They were  _supposed_  to be my little brother's toys. Yes. They were. But ... I came to realize that I wasn't honoring his memory by clinging to things that he would have liked. Time passes, and we have to move on, never forgetting, but accepting that certain things that are ... gone ... can never come back. No matter what. No matter how much we might wish that they could. I understood that, and I thought you did too, but I suppose that it might be a bit beyond -"

"I'm going to be put in suspended animation for a hundred years as part of Negi's plan," Asuna said quietly.

"What," Ayaka said after a brief moment of silence.

"Maybe I could have some aspirin before we start eating," Negi said, just as quietly. "I hear it's good to take it with food -"

"You shock me, I shock you," Asuna said, looking off to one side.

"No ...  _what?_ " Ayaka repeated, just a bit louder.

"Say what again. I dare you."

"Of all the movies I showed you to try and help you with your English, that is the one that had to stick?" Negi complained. He wasn't sure to whom he was complaining really, but he did feel entitled to voice a certain complaint.

" _What_ do you _mean_ , you're  _going_ to be  _put_  in  _suspended animation_  for a  _century_  as  _part_  of  _Negi-sensei's plan?_ " Ayaka shrieked.

"It's really kind of amazing how she can emphasize parts of the sentence when she's screaming like that, isn't it?" Asuna mused to Negi.

Negi didn't answer. It was somewhat difficult even for someone with his abilities to talk when his hands were over his face. Moaning, now, that he could manage. And he did so.

"Asuna-san!"

"I don't know what the heck you want from me," Asuna said, finally looking right at Ayaka for the first time since her bomb had been dropped. "I can't elaborate on it except by talking about weird magical jargon that I don't really understand and you won't either, and I can't say 'psyche, just kidding' because I'm not kidding, so before I say anything, could you tell me what exactly you want me to say?"

"Why," Ayaka said with glacial slowness, "am I only now learning about this?" Her jaw dropped. "Don't tell me ... no! You couldn't have done it again! Tell me that this isn't like with Negi-sensei's magic and I'm the last one in our class to find out!"

"You weren't the last one last time either, that was Fuuka and Fumika!" Asuna protested.

"Actually, Kaede told them everything before we left for the airport," Negi interjected.

"Oh," Asuna said, wind momentarily taken out of her sails. "Okay, then ... but you still weren't the last one to know, that was, I guess, the cheerleaders! Or maybe Satsuki-san!"

"I actually think she might have known since the festival," Negi mused. "If not earlier."

"Whatever!" Asuna snapped. "This time, I've only told Konoka, Setsuna, Asakura, Chisame, Kotaro and, well, technically, I've admitted it to Nodoka and Yue, and I guess Konoka also told Haruna when she was telling the two of them and Asakura has also told Sayo-chan but I haven't really talked about it with either of them and Evangeline and Chachamaru also already know and, oh, gosh, I guess Hakase knows, unless Chachamaru kept it out of her logs but I can't see why she would and ah crap you really are coming in late," Asuna concluded rather weakly.

"Kaede knows, too," Negi added just as weakly. "And ... well, I think Commander Tatsumiya and Zazie-san -"

Had this been a slightly more absurdist story, mention would here have been made of the way that Ayaka had literally turned to stone while listening to this litany. But in fact, she had only figuratively done so, become very pale and utterly, utterly still and silent, until at last she stopped being either thing. " **I FOUND OUT AFTER AISAKA SAYO DID?** " Ayaka screamed at the top of her lungs.

"Well, not much after," Asuna offered.

"Oh, well, then," Ayaka said, grinning broadly after a moment of gaping at her. "That makes it all better!  _Not!_ " she snarled. "And when, pray tell, were you planning on telling me about this, if not for your inadvertent discovery today?"

Asuna looked at Negi. Negi looked at Asuna. Then, simultaneously, the two of them looked away from each other, all without even once looking in Ayaka's direction.

So they weren't looking at her as her eyes went wide and her jaw worked silently for a few moments, before a tiny voice finally came out of her mouth. "You weren't planning to tell me at all." Her tone didn't make it a question.

"... you probably would've noticed when I didn't show up for graduation, so ... then, maybe?" Asuna speculated, still without looking at Ayaka.

The blonde debutante staggered, glancing at the table with the cooling food on it. "I wish we were a little older," she said dazedly. "Just a few years older. Then I would have felt justified in raiding our family's wine cabinets, and there would be glasses of wine there, and I could pick one up and  _throw it in your face!_  Instead, all we have is fruit juice, and that just wouldn't be even a little bit the same, now would it?"

"Oh, come on," Asuna groaned. "Look, if you're mad, go ahead and start grabbing my face or -"

"Why bother?" Ayaka interjected, stumbling towards one of the dining room chairs, and pulling it away from the table so that she could collapse into it, staring wildly at the two of them. "Why bother indeed? There's no point in it. No point to any of that. You don't care about me at all."

"What?"

"It's so obvious, in hindsight," Ayaka continued her monologue, gesturing with her hands. "You were uncomfortable with my honest expression of emotion, so I returned to our old banter, and yet even that just makes you irritable, so it's clear that you just don't care even little bit about me, that I'm just some sort of burden, and -"

"No!" Asuna snapped, dashing over to stand in front of the chair, hands gripping its arm rests as she brought her face right up to Ayaka's. "That's not it. That's not even a little bit -"

"Then why?" Ayaka demanded, tears starting to flow. "Why didn't you tell me, why weren't you going to tell me, why, why, why?!"

"What are you going to do, now that you know?" Asuna demanded right back.

Ayaka drew in a shaky breath, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, there were no more tears there. "I'm going to save you, of course," she snapped. "I'm going to use everything in my power, every resource my family commands, to -"

"Yes, of course you are!" Asuna interrupted. "God, no wonder you went crazy for Negi, he's just like you!"

Negi blinked. So did Ayaka. They exchanged a look, then blinked some more.

"I consider my point proven," Asuna said with a roll of her eyes.

"What in the world -" Ayaka started to demand.

Asuna slapped her hands against the chair's armrests. "You'll do whatever it takes to rescue me. You'll drop everything to do that.  _Just like him!_  And tell me, oh person of awesome power and deep responsibility, what else  _won't_  get done while you're moving earth and heaven? What if something seriously important goes wrong and you aren't able to deal with it because of all the resources you've dedicated to saving me? How'll you live with that?" She was silent for a second, then added, far more quietly. "How am  _I_  ... supposed to live with that?"

Ayaka stared up at her, then turned to look at Negi. "Is this an argument she presented to you?"

Negi nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

She returned her gaze to Asuna. "Let me guess what his response was, then. 'You are just as important as anything could possibly be.' Confess the touch, please," she added when the other girl flinched.

"But I'm not," Asuna replied through gritted teeth. "I'm not ... I'm not ... I'm not -"

"Asuna -" Negi tried to interject.

"I'm not real," she said at last. "This person that you care for, she's just another silly illusion, and you should - you can get along without me, I know it, you'll find -"

Ayaka's hands, folded in her lap, shot up to grab hold of Asuna's forearms. "You are  _not_  permitted to say that," she hissed. "Whichever of the confused young women presently residing in what I may loosely refer to as your mind whom I am presently addressing, know this - you are  _not_  permitted to dictate to whom this Yukihiro Ayaka gives her love and affection. Not now, not  _ever_." Very quietly, she added. "And no one, not even you, is ever permitted to say, in my hearing, that Kagurazaka Asuna is not real. Not now. Not ever."

Asuna sagged - quite possibly, without Ayaka's firm grip on her arms, she might have collapsed. "Dammit," she said.

"Language," Negi interjected.

Asuna recovered enough to shoot him a look which told him that he was going to pay for that later. "You really do love me, huh?" she said to Ayaka.

Ayaka hesitated, then sighed. "Yes, I guess that I do, at that. It's so annoying. I did so want to be pure for Negi-sensei, but it just didn't work out that way."

"Oh, that's not a problem," Asuna said, shooting Negi a look that told him that later had arrived. "Negi doesn't really mind purity. Really, not at all."

"Oh, boy," Negi muttered.

"What are you talking about?" Ayaka asked.

* * *

"Do you think it's safe to go back in?" asked one of the maids waiting outside the closed door to the dining room.

" **You did what?** " came a shriek from that direction.

"Not even a little bit," the maid she'd addressed answered. "Let's go clean the house. Specifically, the other side of the house."

* * *

"I do not believe this," Ayaka groaned, her hands over her face. "The nonsense between Chizuru and Kotaro-kun was bad enough, but this? Is there something in the water in the magical world? Is that it?"

"Why do people instinctively go for a 'is there something in the water' bit?" Asuna wondered as she looked down at her, then turned to look at Negi who was taking off his jacket. "What are you doing?"

Negi shook his head. "I know where this is going," he said as he undid his tie. "It's going to the exact same place that it always goes. I'm tired of trying to argue against it, and it never ever works when I do, so I've decided to just stop fighting and submit to my own baser instincts." He started to unbutton his shirt.

"... well, okay, then!" Asuna replied cheerfully. "How'bout you?" she directed at Ayaka.

Ayaka let her hands fall and gazed wonderingly at Asuna. "You had  _two_  huge secrets like this, but you had the nerve to be surprised by my donating my little brother's toys to charity."

"I think we're kind of past that, now," Asuna replied irritably.

"I think we maybe shouuuuuuhhhh -" Ayaka broke off as she saw Negi taking down his pants to reveal his boxers.

Asuna followed her gaze, and snickered. "Loves me, she says, but show her that, and all of a sudden -"

"Oh, do be still," Ayaka sighed, standing up. "Negi-sensei ... I am, I think, in much the same situation as you. I find that I do, in fact, yearn for this, this ... consummation of our relationship, even if it means that we can never return to the innocent happiness we once - Asuna-san, stop laughing."

"Innocent? You kissed him so hard he damn near fainted! Innocent?!"

Ignoring her, Ayaka returned to her theme. "However, I am ... quite naive in these matters. While there have been many young men who have attempted to gain my affections, I never allowed myself to grow so close to any of them, and ..." She hesitated, then looked away. "The one person with whom I was almost as close, I pushed away, and - well, never mind any of that now. If this is to be, you must be my teacher in this, as well."

Negi nodded after a moment. "I will strive to do so to the best of my abilities. But please do not call me master or anything like that."

"Eh?"

"Never mind." He stepped forward, wrapped his arms around her and pressed their lips together.

Asuna half-expected to see Ayaka's nose explode in a shower of gore, but it didn't happen. After hesitating for a moment herself, she stepped forward and began to examine the fasteners of Ayaka's dress. It was relatively easy to figure out, and her fingers were more than capable of undoing them. At the sensation of Asuna's fingers on her back, however, Ayaka tensed up and turned to look at her with a startled look that Asuna answered with a raised eyebrow.

Ayaka swallowed ... then nodded.

Asuna leaned forward and pressed her lips against Ayaka's, then half-turned to kiss Negi as well, then watched the two of them kissing for a moment while she worked the fasteners, then pushed in again to claim someone's lips, she wasn't really sure whose, as the top of the dress finally came undone and sloughed off Ayaka's shoulders to reveal her braless status.

"Ahem," said Asuna.

"This is simply how this dress works!" Ayaka insisted, blushing brightly.

Before she could answer Asuna's amused glance with further insistence that she hadn't had any salacious intent when she picked this dress, her mind went completely blank. The sensation of Negi's mouth on her nipples, nursing at her like a little baby bro- like a baby, ahem, drowned all other thoughts out. She faintly shrieked with happiness.

"Uh-huh, he's really very good at that," Asuna said absently. "Cripes, how the heck do you get this skirt undone? It's impossible! Anyone would think you didn't have any salacious intent when you picked this dress!"

"Uh duhdn't!" Ayaka squealed around her hand, which was covering her mouth as her head fell back and she gasped at the sensations Negi's tongue was provoking in her.

"Whatever you say, but - ah, geez." Asuna sighed. "I really am still a baka ranger, aren't I? There's an obvious solution. Just a second."

"Tuhke yuhr tuhm!"

Asuna rolled her eyes as she darted over to the table and snatched up a certain item. She turned, fully intending to quickly head back ... then paused as she saw how much sheer happiness was radiating from the class representative's face.  _Well,_  she thought,  _might as well get naked myself. It's not like I'm doing this for ..._

_...cripes, I'm such a tsundere._

By the time she was down to her panties, Negi and Ayaka had both dropped to their knees and were slowly descending further, doubtless to end up on the floor. While that wasn't a problem, her plans did require Negi to be somewhat upright, so she quickly headed over. "Hey, Negi," she said.

Negi looked up. "Hmmm?"

She whipped out the pepper grinder from behind her back and gave it a twist, shooting a cloud of freshly ground pepper right into his face.

"Oh, come on, you ca- ... ca- ... kachoooo!" Negi sneezed, somewhat undermining his argument.

"Gesundheit," Asuna said smugly as she observed that the difficult to remove skirt was presently decorating the far wall of the dining room.

"... what just happened?" Ayaka asked bewilderedly as she stood there, completely denuded.

"No panties, either, huh?"

"What? No, I distinctly remember putting some on and -"

Negi rubbed his nose unhappily.

A few moments later, Negi was flat on his back on the floor, with Ayaka crouched over his hips, gazing down in awestruck wonder at his member. Asuna was crouching behind her, pressed up against her back. "Well?" she asked.

"It's just so cute," Ayaka said softly.

"... cute?" Asuna repeated. "It's a one-eyed trouser snake."

"Ruby-tipped warrior of love," Ayaka cooed a correction.

"Um, could we please stop coming up with silly names for my penis?" Negi asked. "It's just a little embarrassing, really."

Ayaka drew in a deep breath, then nodded solemnly. "Yes, Negi-sensei, we will move on from that now. We will move on to the trying part of this. I know there will be pain, and blood, but you must not worry for -"

"You ride horses," Asuna interjected dryly.

Ayaka broke off, and twisted around to look at her bewilderedly. "I know that I ride horses. Why do you see the need to announce it?"

Asuna used her hands to mime a pair of legs spreading.

"... why are you making odd gestures in response to a perfectly straightforward question?"

"... oh great balls of fire, how can  _anybody_  be so ... look, there's not going to be any pain and blood, okay, so just hurry up and go for it, will you?" Asuna replied. "Should've done it with Maki-chan first, I bet she wouldn't have been anywhere nearly this naive," she added in a low mutter.

Blithely ignoring that last remark, Ayaka turned back to Negi and smiled sweetly down at him. "Please be gentle," she cooed as she grabbed his unit firmly.

"Got it," said Negi as he shifted in her grasp, pushing the tip of his erection up into her.

"Ahhhhhhh!" Ayaka cried. "Oh joy, oh bliss, oh elysian transport! At last we are one, as was always -"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, he's just gotten started!" Asuna groaned, then pushed Ayaka down so that the erection went further up into her.

"GUUURGGGHHHH!" Ayaka commented as her eyes went utterly blank.

"Aaaaahhh!" Ayaka shrieked a few moments later. "My hips, my hips! They're moving on their owwwwwnnnn!"

"No, you're moving them," Asuna informed her as she pushed tightly up against the other girl's back. "You're in control of yourself and you don't get to pretend otherwise. No matter what happens," she added as she reached down to rub Ayaka's rear entrance with her fingers.

"Aaaahhh!" shrieked Ayaka some more. "No, don't, not there, it's dirrrrtyyyy!"

"Eeesh! Are you going to use every single cliche in the book?" She shook her head as she snaked her other hand around the front of Ayaka's self-governed hips, so that her fingers brushed against the other girl's clitoris. "Let me guess, now you're going to say -"

"Nooooo!" Ayaka obligingly shrieked. "I'm going to go craaaaaaaaazzyyyyy!"

"Are these really cliches?" Negi asked as he pumped up into Ayaka.

"Oh, such cliches."

"Nyaaaaaagggghhh!"

"And so is reverting to wordless howls."

"AAAAAAAHHHH!" Ayaka climactically shrieked, then collapsed forward onto Negi's chest, giggling faintly. "So good, Negi-sensei, so very very wait wait why are you still hard inside of me?"

"Well, um, I didn't really -" Negi stammered uncomfortably.

Ayaka's eyes went tiny. "But ... but surely the terrible pressures of my orifice constricting upon your member as I achieved the blissful state of climax would be enough to compel you to release your ejaculation up into my moist, receptive womb?"

"... sorry," Negi apologized.

"But ... but ... but surely -?"

"Oh, just fuck him some more, already," Asuna sighed, drumming her fingers impatiently on Ayaka's right shoulder blade. "He's kind of developing a talent for staying hard for a long time."

"But ... but ..."

"Or would you rather watch me do it?"

"... ahhhh!" Ayaka shrieked. "My hips are moving on their owwwwwnnnn!"

* * *

Several minutes and a few position changes later, Ayaka was lying on her back, lifting her head with just a bit of difficulty to gaze at the white fluid splashed across her belly in confusion. "But -" she said, blinking. "But - why? Why did you not spill your masculine liqueur into the flagon of my femininity?"

"Okay, please stop using language that reeks of purple text," Asuna said wearily, before she bent to start licking the semen up off of Ayaka's stomach.

"Prose," Negi announced.

"Huh?"

"Purple prose, not purple text."

"Oh. I was wondering about that, since I don't think books in English are ever printed in purple text, are they?"

"No, the term comes from a Latin phrase -"

"Negiiiii!" Ayaka squealed, interrupting this fascinating discussion. "Why didn't you finish inside of me?"

"Well ... I wasn't sure if it was a safe day or not?" Negi replied.

"What?" Ayaka asked blankly.

"A safe day," Negi repeated, then flushed as he realized that repetition was no substitute for explanation. "You know, a day when a young woman can't become pregnant."

"... there are such things?" Ayaka asked blankly.

"Not really," Asuna interjected, between licks of Ayaka's stomach, gazing speculatively at the other girl's clitoris as she did so.

"Well, then, I don't - has he finished inside of you?" she asked, changing direction abruptly.

"Oh, yeah, I don't know how many times ..." Asuna replied dreamily.

"Asuna," Negi groaned.

"Not fair! Not fair not fair not fair!" Ayaka ranted, shaking her fists in the air. "Am I to tolerate such inequality? Is it not bad enough that Asuna-san has become better than me in practically everything we were once equals or I her obvious better -"

"But, but you could become pregnant," Negi objected soothingly.

"And Asuna-san cannot -"

"No," Asuna interrupted. "I cannot."

The words hung in the air for a long moment.

"I know you don't want to hear it," Asuna said, when that moment had passed. "But I ... am just ... a doll."

* * *

"No, you're not," Ayaka said, again, a few minutes later, as the two of them floated together on the surface of the mansion's pool.

"That's the fifteenth time you've said that without me saying anything," Asuna replied as she stared up at the vaulted ceiling.

"And I will say it fifteen more times if that's what it takes to get you to believe it," Ayaka replied as she stared in the same direction. "Or fifteen hundred. Or fifteen thousand. No, you're not."

"The thing about lies, even sweet, beautiful, life-affirming lies, is that no matter how much they're repeated, no matter how many people choose to believe them - reality keeps right on being reality." Asuna considered her own words for a moment. "Good grief, when the hell did I get so profound?"

"No, you're not."

"No, really, I think that was just pretty profound, right up there with what Eva-chan said about souls and stories and stuff like - oh. You're still doing it."

"We are Ala Alba. We make the impossible possible. Reality can go take a hike." A brief pause. "No, you're not."

Asuna closed her eyes. "You crazy, crazy, crazy girl," she said. "I think ... yeah, on the whole, this has been a pretty sweet life. I've known some pretty great people ... but even so ... I think meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me."

Slowly her hand reached out across the water, and just as slowly, Ayaka's hand reached out and wrapped around it. The two girls turned to look at each other, as they floated there, and smiled.

"No, you're not," Ayaka said.

"Oh, geez, enough with that already."

On the edge of the pool, Negi sat and watched two of the people he loved most in the world finally accepting their love for each other ... and wished, so very much, that it hadn't taken this to bring it about.

But he wished for a lot of things.

* * *

_A few days after that and a few hours after we came in:_

"Let me get this straight," Misa said flatly as she stared at the card depicting Sakurako in her cheerleader outfit, held in her hand. "You ... kissed ...  _him_."

"When you put it like that, it sounds like some great betrayal," Sakurako commented from where she was being held in a shoulder lock by Madoka. "You're really  _good_  at this, I can't wiggle out at all," she added to her other partner.

"That's because it is a great betrayal!" Misa yelled, banging her desk with a shoe she'd gotten somewhere. "Saku, it's bad enough that you went and helped that little jerk after we walked off with his barrel, but to kiss him? I can't believe you! What were you thinking?"

"Mostly, 'this will show him not to underestimate us', mixed with a bit of 'why is he such a good kisser for a boy his age'?" Sakurako answered honestly. Mostly honestly. The portion of her thoughts which had been 'aggh I can't believe I have to go through with this' had actually outnumbered 'such a good kisser' by a reasonable amount, but there was no point in dwelling on such things.

"So he's actually a good kisser?" Makie asked curiously from the next row of seats.

"Surprisingly, yes," Sakurako admitted. "I mean, there wasn't any tongue or anything like that," she added, lying through her teeth.

Makie nodded in understanding. "There wasn't any when I kissed -"

"What do you mean, 'not to underestimate us'?" Misa asked, since her interest in listening to Makie's harebrained romance tales was only slightly greater than her interest in having a dirty yak sit on her dinner. It was a little surprising that she'd gotten to first kiss stage without everyone in the entire world knowing about it, but now was not the time to address the issue. "How did you kissing him and somehow getting a magically-appearing and -disappearing card out of it show that he shouldn't underestimate us?"

"Oh, I see why you did it," Makie interjected cheerfully. "It was like that with us, too, wasn't it, Yuna?"

"Eh, kinda sorta," Yuna agreed.

"What are you all talking about?" Misa asked.

"Pactios," Makie and Sakurako chorused. Then, "Jinx! Double jinx! Okay, seriously stop it. This is getting creepy."

"Huh?" Misa said, abjectly bewildered.

"You know, pactios. When you kiss someone who can use magic and get a card and sweet magical powers out of the deal," Yuna explained. "Like we all did with Negi-kun."

"Huh?" Misa repeated, still abjectly bewildered.

And then, because some things simply must happen, Yuna tapped her head with her fingers and shook it in profound and patently false regret. "Oh, that's right, Kakizaki has yet to experience the adventure! I feel sooo bad about saying anything at all! Tsk. Tsk. Tsk."

"Back up a second," Misa said, very quietly. "When you say 'like we all did', who exactly are we talking about?"

* * *

A few moments later, Fate was approaching the classroom. "Well, hopefully, they'll have calmed down now that the festival is over," he mused aloud. "... good grief, I'm talking to myself out loud. This never happened when I was the leader of an evil organization. Well, other than that one time when I -"

The door flung open, and Misa ran out, with Madoka and Sakurako (the latter still in a shoulder hold) following closely behind her. "Prepare yourself, Negi-sensei!" Misa declared. "Your lips are about to be stolen by a sexy older woman! Oh crap," she concluded as she saw Fate.

"This isn't my fault," Sakurako said when she did the same.

"Ghrar," Fate replied.

**To Be Continued**


	10. Misa, Madoka, Sakurako

Fate was pleased that there was only a very brief interval between his first knock at the door and it opening to reveal Negi, dressed in his usual outfit minus his jacket, blinking in surprise. "Good evening, Fate, is -"

"Yes, we have a problem," Fate interrupted.

Negi blinked, then let out an angry sigh. "It's those damned airspace permits, isn't it? I had a feeling we were missing something when we signed off on the last of them. All right, let me just get my jacket and -"

"No, no," Fate interrupted again, feeling obscurely pleased that Negi's mind had immediately gone to questions of the project rather than anything personal, and also making a note to check the airspace permits. Later. "Kakizaki and Kugimiya have learned about pactios."

Negi stared at him for a few moments. "Gosh," he said, mildly. "Who could have imagined that would happen after Sakurako-san was told about them by ... who was it again?"

"It is not the time to discuss the question of responsibility," Fate retorted. "If they had simply sought to make a pactio with me, I would not have bothered to bring this to your attention, but simply shut the two hoydens down."

"Ahem."

"The two charming and clever young ladies, then," Fate continued, now obviously annoyed. "However, they have fixated on making a pactio with you, which I'm sure you'll agree will be a distraction that you cannot afford, even if you have, amazingly, added Aisaka to your association."

Negi blinked. "Now how in the world did you know about -"

"In her somewhat disjointed explanations of how this had come to pass, Shiina-san mentioned that your other associates had volunteered their identities, including Aisaka. Though oddly not Naba, for some reason. I find that young woman utterly bewildering," he added.

"'Shiina-san'?" Negi repeated with a raised eyebrow and the trace of a smile.

Fate let out a sigh. "We are dwelling on tertiary matters. I have temporarily prevented them from seeking you out by putting them in detention for running in the hallways and making a disturbance there. I am now asking you ... no. No, I am not asking you. I am, in the name of our project, demanding that you not make a pactio with them."

Negi took a deep breath. "Fate ... a question, if I may. When you say that you put them in detention, what exactly do you mean by that?"

Fate blinked. "I left them in the classroom with instructions not to leave it and informed the hall monitor that if she saw them she was to take them into custody and - and - and -" He gradually trailed off as a sick expression settled on his face.

Negi reached out and patted him on the shoulder. "I did the same thing once," he assured him. "And nobody was there to tell what was going to happen when I got back to the classroom. Well, admittedly, I suspect that you'll just find it empty rather than being ambushed and hugged and tickled, but it amounts to the same thing."

"The security staff. The  _janitorial_  staff. I'm good at that. I'm  _good_  at cleaning up other people's messes," Fate said, eyes gone a bit wild. "But no. Be a teacher, like I was, you told me. Is that really what friendship means to you, Negi-kun?"

"Fate, calm down."

"I am perfectly calm!" said Fate. He drew in a deep breath, perhaps recognizing that using multiple exclamation points was not all that suggestive of calmness. "I will go and I will find them. I would appreciate it if you would promise that, if they come to you seeking a pactio, you will not give it to them."

Negi sighed. "Very well, since this is clearly very important to you, I will promise - if, after this, Misa-san, Madoka-san or Sakurako-san come to me seeking a pactio, I will not give it to them."

"Thank you," Fate said, stepping back. "I apologize for the outburst. I will be on my way. Good evening." And with that he was gone.

Negi closed the door and turned back to look at Misa, sitting in the center of the room in the middle of a circle and grinning broadly, while Madoka and Sakurako (the latter looking just a tad bit guilty) lounged around and looked on. "So we gonna do this or what?" Misa asked.

He sighed. "We are going to do this -" he began.

"Yay!" declared Misa, fist pumping in the air.

"-  _after_  we have a little conversation about sneaking out of detention," he continued, frowning.

"Could we switch up the order there?" Madoka asked as all three of them made unhappy faces.

"No. Now ... I realize that you probably think Fate was being a little harsh when he gave you detention for trying to make a pactio with me," Negi began. "And, honestly, I agree that it was sort of an overreaction on his part."

"Sort of?" the girls chorused, exchanging wild looks.

"... girls, after all this time, I'd hope you'd be familiar with British understatement. Notwithstanding that - this entire situation is undermining the tentative truce between you and Fate that one of you worked very hard to establish, and I'd like to understand why you're doing that. Sakurako-san? Would you care to comment?"

"... I'm really just kinda peeved with him for throwing me in detention when I was just being dragged along," Sakurako said after a moment, not meeting Negi's eyes as he looked at her.

"That's understandable. But you also understand that he's probably peeved at you for getting dragged along?" She opened her mouth to respond, but Negi pressed on. "But that even so, he still thinks very highly of you?"

"Huh?"

"'Shiina-san'?" he quoted.

"Huh."

"So I'm asking you to consider not wrecking that progress, and -"

"Negi-kun," Misa interjected, waving a hand. "I don't have that kind of relationship with him, and I don't ever want one. Frankly, the sooner this guy is out of all of our hair -"

"That's a very immature attitude, Misa-san," he told her. "In recent days, while working on my project, I've had to encounter quite a few people who annoyed me just as much as Fate seems to annoy you. But I've striven to remain professional and -"

"Have you found yourself counting the seconds until you were out of their presence?" she asked, chin resting on the knuckles of her right hand.

Negi paused. Closed his eyes. And admitted, quietly, "Once or twice."

"Swell. Then you know what our every school day has been like since he showed up."

At last, Madoka let out an annoyed grunt. "Come on, Misa, it's not that bad. And anyway, it's not like Negi-kun can get Fate pulled off the job now, is it?" she added, addressing this remark to Negi.

"Whatever," Misa growsed. "Can we get on with the kissing, now?"

He sighed. Really, it wasn't terribly surprising that he wasn't going to be able to deal with the animosity between Fate and Misa-san with just a simple speech, but he had to admit that it would have been nice if it had worked out that way. Nevertheless, for the moment all that he could do was walk over to the circle and sit down in the middle of it in front of Misa, trying as he did so to ignore the fact that her shirt was unbuttoned to show off her cleavage, with predictable nonsuccess.

"Now, before we do this," Negi said as she leaned eagerly towards him, "I think I need to clarify a few things."

"Oh come on," Misa groaned, nearly collapsing. "Did the other girls get speeches first too?"

"Well, no, but every time before - well, almost every time," he amended in a fit of honesty. "With the exceptions of Iinchou and Chizuru-san -"

Madoka sat up straighter. "Hold it. Chizuru-sama is in on this?"

"'-sama'?" chorused the other three people in the room as they turned to regard her.

"Uh, well, you know, she's, um, she's kind of intimidating and someone who, y'know, wanted to be thought of as just a teensy bit more feminine might just possibly have asked her for some, well, some advice, and then afterwards walked away with, well, uh, huge ... respect, dude?" concluded Madoka, having figuratively become a brightly glowing six-inch tall figurine version of herself.

"If you wanted help with that, why didn't you ask me?" Misa demanded.

"... gosh, why didn't I think of that?" Madoka said dryly.

"Yes, why -" Misa started to repeat, having clearly missed the subtext of Madoka's reply.

"Anyway!" Negi interjected. "In every previous case, the situation was one where my partner was either in a dangerous situation or becoming involved in something where the benefits of a pactio would be very helpful. That doesn't apply here, since neither you, Misa-san, nor you, Madoka-san, will be getting involved with my project. I'm willing to give you one -"

"Hold it," Sakurako interrupted. "Why not me?"

"Well, you already have a pactio, Sakurako-san," he explained in the tone of one explaining something which doesn't require explanation.

"But, but - but you already have a pactio with another girl who has a pactio with Fate!" the blonde said, blinking frantically. "What difference would one more make?"

Negi hoped that nobody noticed the slight flinch that went through him at this offhand invocation of Shiori. He hadn't allowed himself to think of her since they'd parted company, and he suspected that if she knew what he'd been doing, she'd be horribly disappointed in him. Still, that was just one more burden he was going to have to bear. "That isn't the point," he said aloud. "Actually, no, now that I think about it, that  _is_  the point. I don't generally enter into these things for no reason, and neither should you. Even though, and I hope you all understand this, having a pactio with me isn't a ticket to a ... deeper relationship, I still think that it's important to -"

"Negi-kun," Misa interrupted, staring at him. "Do you actually have a girl that you like?"

"Well, of course," Negi said promptly. "I like Asuna, and Konoka, and Setsuna, and -"

Hands slammed down on his shoulders as Misa, despite being rather shorter than his aged up form, managed somehow to loom over him. "Not even remotely what I was talking about," she said, just a bit loudly. "I mean, if making a pactio isn't a ticket to a deeper relationship with you, then does that mean you  _don't_  have a particular girl that you really care about?"

Negi found himself in a bit of a fix, here. As he was starting to realize, he had several different and frankly contradictory agendas to deal with in this conversation. He wanted to (a) make sure these girls did not find out that he was coupling with the girls he'd just named and quite a few other ones on top of that and (b) answer their questions honestly  _and_  (c) avoid if at possible getting these girls in a sexy mood since that only ever ended one way lately. He couldn't but suspect that these contradictory agendas were going to make it impossible for him to fulfill any of his goals.

"Um -" he began to say.

"And before you answer," Misa pressed on as she continued to loom, "I should point out that the sort of  _utter jerk_  who could cheerfully brush off the feelings of the innocent delicate flower-like girls around him is so utterly not the sort of person who should be protecting the world!"

"... oookay, then," Negi said. "Um ... well, without diminishing anyone's feelings ... because I'm definitely not that sort of utter jerk, eh-heh, no sir ... um ... I think it would be wrong for me to choose one girl in particular, because, after all, I'm not all that great and -"

"GAHHHHH!" chorused Sakurako and Madoka.

"Eep."

"No, that is the worst way of thinking about this sort of thing, Negi-kun," Sakurako informed him, an extraordinarily intense look on her face.

"It only sounds selfless! It's really not!" Madoka agreed. "Great or small, you have to settle on one girl and hope that she'll accept your feelings and not feel inclined to punch you in the face if you tell her that she's practically one of the guys."

A long pause ensued, in which everyone slowly turned to look at Madoka.

"Um ... not, not that I'm speaking from experience."

"Right," said Misa. "But, um, yeah, whether it's a disturbing kind of feeling like that possessed by whatever freak confessed to Madoka -"

" _Not that I'm speaking from experience!_ "

Ignoring her, Misa continued. "Or more normal types, whether it's a deep feeling or something shallow -"

"Talk about speaking from experience," Madoka muttered.

"- you have to be honest with it. So. Do you like someone in particular, Negi-kun?"

And Negi asked himself that very question ...

"Yes," he answered at last.

"Ah-hah!" Sakurako cheered, snapping her fingers as she held both hands over her head and stomped her feet. "I so called it! It's that Shiori chick, isn't it! Man, I so totally want to meet this girl now, anyone who has you  _and_  Fate-kun going all twitter-paited has got to be -"

"Um, no, no," Negi hastened to explain. "Shiori-san is very important to me, she was the first person on that side whom I really got to know well and she helped me start to understand why Fate was the way that he was, and I haven't been able to make time to see her when I go over there so I guess you could say that I miss her a lot, but I wouldn't say that, well, she's not -"

"Ah-hah!" Madoka said, just a little gloatingly. "It's Asuna, isn't it! I mean, she's been with you the longest and there was that whole thing where she woke up just in time to save you!" Abruptly, she frowned. "Except, no, wait, if we're talking 'been with you the longest', then I guess that Anya-chan is a better candidate."

"Um, no, n- wait, Anya-chan? I didn't realize that you knew her that -"

"Oh, yeah, during that big party after the whole let's-save-Asuna thing, the two of us got talking," Madoka explained. "She's kind of crazy, just deciding that the two of us are friends for some reason, but I guess I kind of like her too. Why do you think she liked me?"

Negi looked at Madoka's not quite  _totally_  flat chest and smoothly (and honestly!) answered, "I'm sure I wouldn't want to speculate."

"Huh. So where'd she go afterwards? I was expecting her to show up here with the rest of us."

"She decided to stay in the Magic World to pursue her studies," Negi explained.

* * *

Negi was telling the truth, as far as he knew it. Anya had told him this was her intention when they parted company. But Anya, true to her archetype, was not always the most honest of persons.

During her imprisonment, Anya had overheard a number of odd conversations between members of Cosmo Entelekhia, who had - as people tended to do - underestimated her to the point of forgetting about her completely. To them, what they had been talking about was basically theoretical, and honestly not of any real interest. To Anya, on the other hand, the notion under discussion tied fairly closely to her dominant obsessions. So she memorized everything that they said.

Once the battle had been won, she'd taken the opportunity to meet with some professional treasure hunters - among them Nodoka's friends, introduced to her by Nodoka herself - and discuss the matter, phrasing it in hypothetical terms so that none of them would be able to jump the gun on her. They'd confirmed the parts of the situation which she'd only suspected, elevating her own hypothesis to an actual theory. And as soon as possible, she'd set out to confirm the theory.

It had been exhausting, trekking through parts of the magical world which had never been amenable to human or demi-human settlement. But weeks of effort had finally brought her to this place, ironically located not far from the Mundus Magicus end of a portal leading to a rather settled area of Mundus Vetus - specifically, the Florida real estate specifically chosen by a rather noteworthy entrepreneur and futurist (who'd known far too much about the world of magic for anyone's comfort) to build an amusement park known the world over as 'the Magic Kingdom'. That side had been close to what had been, prior to its destruction by Spanish missionaries, a Fountain of Youth.

This side, on the other hand, was close to the Fountain of Maturity. Far more useful, in Anya's view, though she did wonder why anyone called it a fountain when it was really more of a basin, collecting rainfall and infusing it with a natural (and far more potent) version of the age-changing magic employed by a certain kind of pill. And she now stood, having stripped off all of her clothes and even her hair decs, at the side of the Fountain, ready to bathe within it for a few short minutes and become the older and of course vastly-more-voluptuous woman of her dreams!

What was that shouting?

Just as the question registered in Anya's mind, a tiny white furry shape dashed out of the dense forest and leapt over the basin, coming to a landing only a short distance from her bare feet. There was a strange zinging noise as it did so. "Anya-chan?" the shape said in an amazed tone.

"Chamo?" Anya gasped. "What in the world -"

"HALT!"

"HALT!"

"HALT!"

The world seemed to slow to a crawl, as Anya turned from her startled contemplation of Chamo to gaze in the direction from which he'd emerged, and saw a trio of heavily armored knights come smashing their way out of it and stumbling towards the basin, the simple cold equations of their movement rendering it impossible for them to come to a halt before they tripped headlong ... into ... it ...

There was an enormous splashing noise.

When Anya's vision cleared, she was gazing at a trio of doddering old men, a bit like pictures of Don Quixote she'd seen, in somewhat rusty armor, attempting to stand up with difficulty in a basin empty of water, and which would probably take no less than a decade to fill to its previous levels.

"Halt!" the old men chorused weakly.

"Woof, that was a lucky break for me," said the only white thing in all the world of red-tinted fury that was Anya's immediate perception. "Anyway, how's by you, kiddo?"

Her reply was, of course, unprintable and incoherent and very, very loud.

* * *

"Anyway, I'm glad that you get along with her, but no, neither she nor Asuna are the girls I was talking about, they're both very important to me but -"

"Hold it," said Misa, holding up a hand. "We don't need to know."

"We don't?" Sakurako and Madoka asked as one, blinking in the same manner.

"Nope," Misa said, virtuously. "As long as you're honest with yourself, Negi-kun, and as long as you tell that girl how you feel, that's all that matters." A beat. "You have told her, right?"

"Um."

"You're  _going_  to tell her.  _Riiiiiiight?_ "

"... well, I thought I might wait for graduation."

"That's just a few months away, so -"

He was never quite sure what odd fit of honesty compelled his next words. "I, I actually meant  _my_  graduation," Negi admitted sheepishly.

Misa frowned. "I thought you were already a college graduate."

"I am, but, you know, I thought it might be a good idea to go back for a Th.D. or -"

"How long are we talking here?" Misa asked, starting to loom just a bit again.

"... a few years?"

"Years?" the three chorused.

"Maybe not?" Negi wavered.

Misa took in a deep breath and settled down. "That," she said with grave, magisterial patience, "is between you and your conscience. I'm just glad it's not me, because that would really bite. And I suppose that I'm glad it's not Saku or Kugimii, either."

"Don't call me - wait, actually, how do you know it's not -" Madoka started to ask.

She sighed the sigh of the greatly put-upon. "He wouldn't be able to talk about it with us if it was me, silly. And if it was Saku, he'd have gotten upset when he found out about her kissing Fate."

"I'm not that jeal-"

"And it's obviously not Madoka, because it's obviously not Madoka," Misa concluded.

"... why the hell do I keep putting up with this crap?" Madoka roared a moment later, hands over her face.

"Hey, that was really mean, Misa-san!" Negi said, upset. "And it's unfair, too! I mean, I'd be very happy if I liked Madoka-san, I think she's very sexy!"

"Thank you, Negi-kuuuuuu-" Madoka said ... and then fell ominously silent as she looked at Negi, as did Sakurako and Misa.

"What?" Negi asked.

"'Sexy'?" they repeated in chorus.

"... would you believe I misspoke?" Negi asked. "Really, I think that if we all agreed that I, your language arts teacher, inadvertently made a poor word choice and used the term 'sexy' when I meant to say 'pretty' or 'cute', then we would all be much happier and more at peace with the world and ourselves," he continued as Madoka grabbed him in a headlock. Again.

"You said 'sexy'," Misa said, half-dazedly, half-excitedly.

"Really, I don't know why I bother attempting to use reason anymore," Negi said sadly. "It never works."

She wasn't really listening. "That implies that you find us sexually attractive. And  _that_  implies that you are capable of finding girls sexually attractive, not just of having strong feelings for them like you've already admitted. And since you're ... and so ... Oh. Em. GEE. Since you got grown up like this, you've had sex with Asuna - no, not just with her, with quite a few other members of your little gang, haven't you?!"

"Really, Misa-san, I'm a little dismayed by this. If you're capable of such clever logic, I have to wonder why you don't get better grades than you do."

"Cram it, sensei!" she replied, grinning ear to ear.

"Is that true, sensei?" Sakurako asked, eyes wide as she crouched to Negi's side.

"Saku, do you really think he'd be sitting here blathering about reason and logic if it wasn't?" Madoka asked her.

"I think I should take issue with the characterization of my speech as blathering."

Sakurako also ignored that blathering. "But he hasn't really admitted to anything, so it could all just be a horrible if actually sort of funny misunderstanding that happens all the time, like when he said that he wanted all of us to get undressed and show off our bodies but it was just him announcing the start of medical exams. That's it, isn't it sensei? It's allllll just a big misunderstanding by Misa-chan, jumping to conclusions, right?" She smiled sweetly at him, radiating calm and tranquility.

Negi found himself wanting to throw up. "I'm such a bad teacher," he moaned, looking away from her. "Doing such things to my precious students ... worst teacher ever!"

"Holy shit," Sakurako said.

"That sounds like a confession to me," Madoka pointed out.

"Holy  _shit_."

"And now comes the part of the evening's entertainment where the depraved educator must purchase the silence of his clever and sexy students with the only coin available to him," Misa said as she finished unbuttoning her blouse and reached back to let it fall from her shoulders.

" _Holy shit_."

"You could try coming up with something else, you know," Negi said weakly.

"What, no 'language'?" Madoka asked.

"... I don't have the heart right now."

"So, on to our fall from virtue," Misa said cheerfully, bare foot coming up to rest against Negi's clearly bulging crotch, toes twitching.

"I think I'm actually well past that," Negi replied morosely.

"Holy -" Sakurako started to say.

"By our, I meant the three of us, sensei, not the three of us plus you," Misa quickly explained as she started to pull down his zipper, having already unbuttoned the pants' clasp.

"Three of us?" Madoka murmured.

"Ah, I suppose that ... how did you  _do_  that?" he asked, amazed despite himself.

"Brains, beauty, skill and style," Misa replied in the manner of someone reciting a motto.

"That ... doesn't really answer my question."

"Speaking of questions," Madoka said, loosening her grip on Negi's throat slightly. "When you say, 'three of us', do you mean -"

"Yes, Madoka, dear, sweet, cannot-take-a-hint-unless-given-to-you-on-a-silver-platter Madoka, I do intend to share this bounty with you and Sakurako," Misa answered as she got the zipper all the way down, exposing Negi's underpants, which she promptly began to pull down with her incredibly dextrous toes.

"Seriously?"

Deep sigh. "Yes, seriously. I may make fun of you frequently, especially behind your back, but I'm not going to refuse to give you a chance to establish some freaking heterosexuality. And before you respond to 'behind your back', focus on the part of this that has a positive takeaway, would you?"

"Well, all right then," Madoka said, smiling broadly.

But of course Misa was not done. "I know you'd probably prefer it if it were Kotaro-kun whom we' were about to debauch -"

"Not as much as I would," Negi observed as his erection at last came into view.

"- but we cannot have everything our own way. By we I mean you, since I fully intend to have everything my way, always."

"That's a terrible attitude," Negi said. "And actually, won't Sakurako-san refuse to betray -"

"Holy shit!" Sakurako said for the fifteenth time. (You've been spared some of the times in between. Isn't that nice?)

"I think we got that covered," Misa assured him as she touched her toes to his shaft.

"Ah, yeah, there it is," she continued as her toes rubbed it up and down. "Nice size, not too big, nice shape,  _great_  color ... like a rainbow, almost ... mmm, I think it's time to taste the rainbow." She let her foot drop to the floor and followed it shortly, dropping to her knees in front of him.

"I should warn you it won't taste like Skittles," Negi told her.

"... what the hell are Skittles?" Misa asked, pausing to look up at him with a bewildered expression.

He opened his mouth to explain, then thought better of it. "Never mind, just a bad joke. Um, I take it that you've done this sort of thing already?" he asked a bit weakly.

Misa looked affronted. "Sensei! Shame on you! A gentleman never asks such questions and a lady never answers them!"

"Oh, of course, I apologize and -"

"But since you're no gentleman and I'm a hot tramp, I'll tell you all about it if you really want to know!" she concluded, grinning broadly.

"Please say no, please say no, please say no, please say no," Madoka muttered rapidly into Negi's ear.

"I don't think that will be necessary," Negi said smoothly.

"Whatever," Misa said, then promptly dropped her mouth onto his unit, lips sliding down it until they reached his thatch of pubic hair, tongue slicking out to gently caress the skin above his testicles.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you," Madoka muttered rapidly into Negi's ear.

"I take it she boasts about such matters quite a bit," Negi muttered right back.

"Oh so much."

"Seriously, holy shit!" Sakurako demanded.

Negi was then treated to the rather unique sight of Misa rolling her eyes as she slid back up the length of his unit and smacked her lips once the head was past them. "Ah," she gasped, then focused her attention on Misa. "Y'know, if you're gonna talk trash about me, I can think of several better things for you to do with that black tongue of yours."

"Huh?" said Madoka, suddenly on edge. "What are you -"

Misa deliberately eyed Negi's erection, then looked back at Madoka with a raised eyebrow.

"Seriously?"

Misa rolled her eyes again. "Did I become Chisame recently?" she asked no one in particular. "Did I start wearing glasses and frowning all the time? Is that it? Is that why everyone thinks I go in for an unending stream of sarcasm?"

"That's kind of a sarcastic remark, right there," Negi observed calmly.

"Bite bite bite," she said in ominous tones. "Yes, I'm serious," she continued, directing it at Madoka. "I really don't think there's any point in you holding our sweet, big-dicked sensei by his neck anymore, since he's clearly not going anywhere, and so you might as well get down here so we can share the aforementioned sweet, big-dicked sensei. Or would you rather stand around and make witty remarks that are just a bit more clever than the ones Sakurako is making?"

"Holy shit!" said a certain person.

Madoka took a deep breath. "Okay, then," she said, releasing her grip on Negi's neck and oh so slowly circled around the chair, descending as she did until she was on her knees beside Misa, gazing directly at the member between Negi's legs. "It really is big, isn't it?" she said after a moment of silent contemplation.

"Yes it is," Misa agreed. "Now suck it."

Madoka showed no signs of having heard this gently-voiced suggestion. "And yeah, it really does look kind of like a rainbow."

"Yes, now suck it."

"I actually do know what those Skittle things are," Madoka continued.

"Oh for crying out loud," Misa said disgustedly, then grabbed Madoka by the back of her head, following it up by seizing her jaw and jerking it down, then pushing Madoka's head forward so that the head of Negi's unit went in her mouth without much warning.

"Glurgh?" Madoka observed.

"Um, hey now -" Negi started to say.

"I did what I had to do!" Misa proclaimed. "If I hadn't, she'd have been sitting there staring at it for hours and hours and hours. It may be that I'm a little loose -"

"Oh, there's no may be about it," Sakurako said faintly.

Resisting the impulse to tell her other best friend to go back to saying 'holy shit', Misa pressed onward. "- but a certain person is way too tight! That's the real reason I wanted you to come down here!" she added, directing these words to Madoka as she pushed and pulled her back and forth, impaling her mouth on Negi's unit. "You need to be less tight!" With that remark, she yanked Madoka's skirt up, exposing her panties momentarily before pulling them to the side and shoving her fingers into Madoka. "Way too tight!" she repeated.

"I really don't think this is right -" Negi said as he started to push Madoka's head back and away from his unit.

"Nugh!" Madoka grunted just before the dick cleared her lips. "No! No, it's, it's okay, sensei, it's -" Deep breath. "Th-thank you, Misa-sama, for your kindness," she concluded without looking back at Misa's face. Then she ducked her head away from Negi's hand and slid the dick down into her mouth again.

"You're welcome, Madoka-chan," Misa sneered as she continued to finger her.

 _The dynamics of this relationship,_  Negi decided silently,  _are not exactly as I thought they were._  It was a rather frightening thought, to be honest. He glanced in Sakurako's direction, hoping that she might seem as surprised by these developments as he was. Unfortunately, while she had apparently recovered enough poise to be communicative beyond utterances of - well, you know which two words, by now - she was nonetheless directing a shocked look in  _his_  direction, not that of her two teammates. When she saw him looking at her, she apparently got the message, glanced at Misa and Madoka, then turned back to him with a shrug.

 _Greaaaat,_  he thought.

"Ahem," said Misa, as she brought up her fingers to daintily lick them while observing this byplay. "Sakurako will be joining us  _later_ , as a penalty for - well, guess." Observing but apparently misinterpreting. (Well, sort of. That question had crossed Negi's mind briefly.) "Meanwhle ... shift over, Madocchi."

"Muhduhee?" Madoka mumbled as she pulled back so she had just the head in her mouth.

"Close enough," Misa declared, and swooped down to begin licking those parts of the unit that were now exposed. A great deal of byplay then ensued, with the two of them trading off and on, lips brushing against each other frequently as they did so. They didn't seem accidental, those brushes, but they were too brief to really be called kisses, and though one of Misa's hands stayed back there at Madoka's rear, the gesture wasn't returned. Madoka's hands stayed behind her, crossed at the small of her back, as though they were tied there. It was sort of surprising that she was able to maintain her balance like that.

But then again, she was a cheerleader.

And then again, he was finding it somewhat difficult to consider such things, with his attention more or less fixed on the sensations he was feeling, the pressure becoming almost unbelievable.

"Mmmm," siad Misa, pulling back again. "You're almost ready to go, aren't you? Almost ready to let loose that salty white candy of yours." Without warning, she grabbed Madoka's head and pulled her back as well. "You know, it abruptly occurs to me that this might be a good time to settle an argument we've been having for a while, now."

"Oh, come on, Misa, this is not the time to discuss the transience of love and the fragility of the human soul!" Madoka cried, looking to be on the verge of tears.

"Not that one, the other one, you -" Misa snapped.

Another glance at Sakurako.

This time, she answered. "Yeah, we have some really weird conversations."

"The argument about whether an experienced male - like sensei, here - prefers innocence or experience," Misa continued. "So which is it, Negi-kuun? Do you want to spill your seed up into Madoka's innocent coochie or my warm, wet, well-trained one? Which is it?"

"Uh," Negi replied cleverly.

"Or would you rather spew it out on our faces like the naughty whores we are?"

"Now, now," Negi said, just a bit anxiously. "None of you are dirty whores, or any sort of -"

"So that rules out the third option, then," Misa mercilessly cut him off. "In that case, my humble self or Madocchi - who is it gonna be today?" (She'd watched  _Rayearth_  compulsively.)

Negi remained where he was, motionless like a deer caught in the headlights, and feeling incredible tension in his lower regions.

Misa began drumming her fingernails against his thigh as loudly as she could.

When faced with a difficult conundrum, one should analyze all factors. Seeing how it all had been Misa's idea from the start, she probably expected a compensation of sorts the most of them all. Though on the other hand, if that had been what she wanted, she could have simply seized the opportunity to take what she wanted without making him make this choice. From what he was given to understand, Madoka had some sort of interest in Kotaro, and picking her as long as he still had a chance to avoid doing it with her would probably only make his current relationship with his best friend all the more tense. Although that sort of consideration hadn't stopped Kotaro from having sex with Asuna and Chisame, and anyway, Kotaro didn't know about any of this. But nonetheless, Madoka's face seemed to convey a certain reasonable amount of 'Oh shit shit shit pick her first, I can't cope with this yet!' even he couldn't possibly miss. And yet there was also a small amount of 'Oh crap crap crap I am so horny right now, let's gooooo!' there too. Running screaming into the night was not an option, mostly because the sun was only just now starting to set, and it was really more evening than night.

It was really a more difficult decision than it seemed at first glance! Yet decide he must. And so -

"... you?" he squeaked out, in a tone that wouldn't have sounded out of place in his child self, pointing at Madoka.

Misa made a face. "I see. Well. You'd know your preferences best, wouldn't you. Hurry up, Madocchi." She looked neither satisfied nor all that surprised.

"Oh man, I never thought I'd miss being called Kugimin," Madoka groaned as she shifted forward to place herself over Negi's erection. Then, taking a deep breath, she descended onto it, drawing him up into her and -

"Ahhhhh!" Negi cried as he achieved his delayed release.

"Ghhhhaaahh!" Madoka gasped as she felt herself flooded, the surge of warm wetness within her triggering what Misa's forceful fingering had not  _quite_  provoked, spasming in orgasm atop him.

"Huh," said Misa as she watched Madoka quivering. "I honestly expected to have to shove my fist up your ass again to get that result."

"Hyeeeee," replied Madoka as she fell back against Misa, grinning broadly at both her own fulfilment and a narrow escape.

"Again?" Negi repeated a rather frightening word as he disengaged himself as gently as possible from Madoka.

Misa smiled wryly and kissed Madoka's cheek as she settled the delirious girl to the floor. "Okay, now, I'll just take a minute to get you hard agaOHHH SWEET CHRISTMAS you are still like a rock!" she exclaimed as she turned back to Negi.

"Um, yeah, well, you know."

She didn't look a thing like Konoka, but Negi had never seen such a gleeful expression on anyone else's face before. "For what we are about to receive, may we be truly thankful," she said (very approximately), rising, turning around, and sitting down on him so that he entered her from the rear. "Hey, Saku-chan, it's later! Get over here and lick my sweet cooch!"

"Oh well, here we go again," said Sakurako as she dropped to the floor and crawled over to where they were sitting - or rather, where Negi was sitting and Misa was rocking up and down, back and forth, on his lap, letting out short high-pitched shrieks as she did so. The blonde cheerleader's face slid nicely in between the spread thighs of her lavender-haired friend and she obediently started licking the aforementioned sweet cooch.

"Those 'agains' are really starting to concern me," Negi squeaked.

"Ahhhh! Goddamn, I say, goddamn, sensei, you gotta AAAAAAHHH lighten up some!" Misa nearly shrieked, toes curling slightly as her legs came up to rest her heels against Sakurako's still clothed butt. "You're as bad as Madocchi! Am I gonna have to fuck your ass to get you to lighten up too?"

"... and then are those 'toos'," he said after a moment of confusion. "The toos are really dist-"

"Oooh, Sakusaku, you've been practicing on some of the girls on your lacrosse team, haven't you!" Misa interrupted with a squeal.

"Nugh," Sakurako replied semi-coherently as she sucked on Misa's clit. She hadn't. She honestly hadn't even considered it. (She had heard some stuff about the goings-on at the high school level of the team, but she wasn't sure if she believed them or not.)

"Ooooh?" The inflection turned this particular squeal into a question, as if Misa's next words wouldn't have made it clear. "You haven't? What a shame! Are you still crushing on Sa- OUCH!"

Sakurako pulled back from the bite mark she'd just made on Misa's thigh and looked up at her reproachfully.

"Fine, fine, I won't go there," the other girl grumbled.

Negi found himself sighing with relief. Clearly, Misa's dominance wasn't totally unchallenged. Even if he didn't have it in him to challenge it, it was good that the girl didn't, despite what she said, always have her way. Not that it mattered much, since she was clearly just about to have her way with him.

"I'm about to -" he stated.

Misa's response to this was to clench down low on him, pushing the tip of his member up against the mouth of her uterus. "Yes, yes, do it, yes!" she cried.

He did it.

"... climb the mountain, number seventeen," Misa said faintly, before tumbling down off of him to land lightly on the floor.

"... 'climb the mountain'?" Negi repeated, looking down at himself. "It's not  _that_  big, is it?"

"Welllll," Sakurako said, taking a nice long look. "It's actually a bit bigger than most of the guys on the football team have."

"Oh," Negi said, nonplussed. And not certain whether he should be more disturbed by her knowledge of this fact or his own surprising satisfaction at her statement of it.

Some of that apparently showed up on his face. "Relax, it's not what you're thinking," she quickly assured him as she started to rub his erection with her hands. "Part of the team's hazing ritual is to expose themselves to our squad. Nothing more than that." Which was not to say that she had not fucked a few of them  _after_  the ritual, the last time, but that wasn't the point.

"Oh," he repeated, somewhat relieved at the same time that his tension began to rise. It was a confusing moment. That happened a lot. "Um, Sakurako-san, you -"

She held up a hand, waved it slightly. "Let me guess. This is where you assure me that I don't have to do this, that both Misa and Madoka are too out of it to realize that we didn't actually do anything with each other, that you don't want to interfere in the relationship I've got with Fate-kun. How'm I doing?" Her other hand kept stroking him as she talked.

"Um, v-very good, I mean, yes, that's more or less exactly what I was about to say."

Sakurako sighed, shook her head, and went back to using two hands. "Sensei, sensei, sensei," she chanted, doing a particularly vigorous tug on each repetition. "I'm sooo disappointed in you. Do you really think telling me to lie to my best friends is the more responsible course of action?"

"Gyaaaacchhh," Negi replied.

She ignored that odd noise. "And when it comes to Fate-kun, I mean, I went into that thing with no expectations of it ever turning into some sort of sweet love story - and I'm pretty sure he didn't either, even if he's a lot more lonely than he lets on - so he really doesn't have any cause to object. Well, other than the whole you're a kid and I'm a teenager thing, but then he's kind of a kid himself and he was getting all smoochy-face with me so -"

"Wait, you think Fate is lonely?" he asked, having regained a bit of coherence.

Now Sakurako glared at him. "Little bit of focus on the girl with her hands on your dick might just possibly be a good idea, don't you think?"

"Sorry, sorry."

"Anyway ... I have to admit that I wouldn't mind being with grown-up Fate, just like I don't mind being with grown-up you, but none of you are really the person that I want to be with the most. But that person is ... well ..."

"Is it Satomi-san?" Negi asked.

Sakurako blinked. "What? How in the world ... oh. Because of the 'Sa-' thing Misa said earlier." She nodded, then blinked, then shook her head rapidly in negation. "I mean, no, it's not her! Geez! She's cute, but -"

"Well, then, who -"

"Um, if it's okay for  _you_  not to tell  _us_ , then I think - look, enough talk, okay?" And with that, she stood up, yanked up her skirt to reveal that her panties had already been pulled aside and that she was, if not dripping with desire like she would be in other stories, still clearly aroused. "I'm not her, and you're definitely not her. But you're with me, now, and I'm with you. Let's just have some fun, okay?"

"Okay," Negi agreed, with a faint smile on his face.

When Misa finally managed to regain enough awareness to look up, Sakurako was busily riding Negi, her breasts in his face and their tongues intertwined. She smiled, glanced at Madoka who was also watching, and crawled over to assert some more dominance ... and incidentally have sex with one of the people she loved most in the world. (Not that she'd ever admit that where Madoka was listening.)

The third time he had sex in any given episode generally lasted longer than the first two combined, even if he didn't take steps to prolong it by thinking of baseball players as someone had once mentioned doing in his hearing. (Unfortunately for Negi, in his case this consisted of thinking 'Babe Ruth ... um ... Hank Aaron ... Reggie ... Jackson, I  _think_  ... oh, Lou Gehrig ... um ... did I already think of Babe Ruth? ..." and so on and so forth. Had someone told him that thinking of cricket players had the same effect, that would have been much more helpful.) Sakurako seemed remarkably happy about this. Misa, once she realized what was happening, was perceptibly less so.

Well, since he'd thought she shouldn't have her way in everything, that was probably for the best.

Eventually, Sakurako shrieked out her last orgasm just a few moments before he climaxed, and they lay together on the living room table, panting heavily.

"All righty, then," Misa announced. "I guess that we're most definitely ready for those pactios, now, Negi-kun!"

"Oh," Negi sighed, rolling off of Sakurako's giggling form. "Um ... about that ..." He lifted his head and glanced at the circle, which had stopped glowing. "Um, I'm going to have to redraw the circle, I'm afraid ..."

"We can wait," Misa said, not sounding terribly patient.

"... and, well, technically, the resultant delay would mean that you were coming to me seeking a pactio in the future, and I promised Fate that ... if ... you ..." Negi trailed off as all three of them lifted their heads to give him their own unique versions of The Look.

"You cad," Sakurako declared.

"You bounder," Madoka stated with a sad shake of her head.

"Enemy of all -" Misa began to say.

"Okay, I'll just go get started on that right now," Negi interrupted, thoroughly defeated. Fortunately, redrawing the circle was a lot easier than drawing it in the first place had been. Still, he wished that Chamo was there to do this instead, and once again wondered what had happened to his old friend.

* * *

"This is very good tea," the elderly knight told Anya as the three of them sat shivering beside her campfire, armor removed.

"Thanks," she growled.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Chamo screamed as he slowly turned on the spit over the fire. "Come on, Anya, this isn't funny anymore!"

"Beg to differ," Anya ground out between clenched teeth as she kept turning the spit. "I think it's hilarious. Can't you see me smiling at how hilarious it is?"

"Only until my eyeballs pop! This is -"

* * *

"Huh," said Misa as she stared at the card in her hand. "It looks just like Sakurako's. Isn't that weird? Hers is with Fate, so shouldn't they look different?"

Negi finished kissing Madoka, and the light show died down as the newly forged pactio card hung in mid-air. "I really couldn't say. The images on Setsuna's cards symbolizing her pactio with me and with Konoka are slightly different, but until I make my pactio with Sakurako, we won't know what hers looks like -"

"Yeah, about that," said Sakurako. "Um ... I'm okay with not getting another pactio."

Negi blinked. "Really?"

She nodded.

"... well, I suppose it's sort of locking the barn door after the horse has already stampeded, but -" Negi started to say.

It was at that moment that the door to the dorm room was flung open.

"Hey, Negi, we're baaaaa," said Asuna as she goggled at the sight of the cheerleaders - who of course hadn't bothered to get dressed before making the pactio - and in particular the sight of Negi naked in the pactio circle in front of Madoka.

Haruna, who was following along behind her, raised her eyebrows. "Well?" she asked, breaking the silence fallen after Asuna's declaration. "Isn't someone going to say 'this isn't what it looks like'?"

Misa glanced at Sakurako, who was blushing to the roots of her hair, and interrupted her before she could stammer out anything. "This is exactly what it looks like," she said with total sang-froid.

"Shoot," Haruna said with her usual wolfish grin. "I was so looking forward to -"

"Way to go, Negi!" Asuna cheered. "I think we're half-way there, or so!"

Negi let out a sigh. "Welcome back, Asuna. How is Konoka doing?"

"So we're doing 'let's pretend everything is normal'?" Asuna asked.

Negi let out a sigh. "Welcome back, Asuna. How is Konoka doing?"

"Riiight. She's okay, and improving fast ... well, not as rapidly as you do, but enough that Evangeline did her usual bit of not looking at someone while paying them a backhanded compliment bit while I was watching. It's kind of amazing, actually. If a little pointless."

"Then -" he started to ask.

She nodded. "I spoke to Goedel-san, and he said that he'd check, but that he was pretty sure that any escape from the prison where we stuck her would have been reported to him by now. So I think she must be imagining things, not that I'd tell Konoka that."

"'Her'?" Madoka asked, finally finding her voice. "Her who?"

"A bad person," Haruna explained. "And, yeah, this is  _me_  saying this," she added before anyone could say anything, and proceeded to start checking Madoka out. "Niiiice," she murmured.

Sakurako made a small noise. Negi glanced in her direction, and sudden comprehension dawned on his face. "Oh, Sa-" he started to say.

"Negi has a girl that he likes!" Sakurako announced loudly.

"Really?" Asuna and Haruna chorused.

"Yes, and don't you think that she should be told about that?" Misa said, with a glance in Sakurako's direction of her own.

"Definitely!" Haruna quickly agreed. "It's Nodoka, right?" Beat. "Or is it Yue?"

He looked at her in annoyance, then turned to Asuna to say something ... but the look on her face made him halt. "Yes, I do," he said. "And yes ... I am going to tell her. Tomorrow," he added.

"Well, all right then," said Asuna, who was betting on Chisame. "Meanwhile -"

"It's still tonight!" announced Haruna. She held up her drawing hand and snapped her fingers, causing her outfit to dissolve into sparkles and leave her standing there naked as she kicked the door shut behind her.

"... how did you do that?" Negi asked.

"Golem clothes," she explained briskly. "Oh, Kugimiiiin? Let's pick up where we left off when I came back home, okay?" she added, before leaping on Madoka's startled form, the other girl's squawk of panic drowning out Sakurako's tiny wail of frustration.

Misa would probably have given Sakurako a vague word of comfort had her mouth not presently been occupied by Asuna's tongue.

"Welcome to my world," Negi told her wearily.

"Thanks," she replied in much the same manner.

**To Be Continued**


	11. Makie, Ako

It wasn't true to say that Fate had come to hate the smiling faces of his class. That would be both inaccurate and insufficiently specific. He had, on a fundamental level,  _always_  resented the smiling faces he saw anywhere he went on the Old World, so the smiling faces of these thirty young women were really only a subset of something he already disliked.

He was self-aware enough to realize that it was unfair to resent the happiness he occasionally glimpsed here. It was not the fault of any of these people that the Magical World had become what it was, and he suspected that if they had known, many of the more affluent people of this world would have volunteered some of their time and resources to help prevent it or assist it, just as they routinely offered material assistance to regions of their own world afflicted by natural disasters, when they were able to do so.

Further, he suspected that the resentment he felt was not so much his own as it was a lingering aspect of his creator's influence on his programming, and, having decided to oppose the creator's intentions on the grounds that his master did not fully understand the situation, felt obligated to to resist such lingering influence to the best of his ability.

But when that lingering influence coincided with a genuine feeling he had decided to allow himself, such as his resentment of these oh so very very  _very_  annoying young women ... he was willing to go with it.

And right at the moment, the smug smile he was seeing on the face of Kakizaki Misa was driving him crazy, particularly since he couldn't understand why she was smiling.

He'd called her and Kugimiya and Shiina-san aside at the start of homeroom, informed them that skipping out of detention was not going to be tolerated, that they would be getting an additional detention for the rest of the week ... and Kakizaki, speaking for the trio, had kept right on smiling as he'd done so, nodding politely and not raising any fuss over the subject. Kugimiya and Shiina-san had looked a bit more apprehensive, but they hadn't objected.

He was getting what he wanted, so why was she smiling?

She couldn't have -

 _No,_  he told himself confidently, silently, as he didn't bother to listen to Yotsuba doing her recital from the text.  _Negi-kun would not betray me like that. He promised he would not give them a pactio if they came to him, and he will keep his word._

_He has to keep his word._

_It's what a gentleman does._

_As long as he is dealing with another gentleman._

He felt his teeth grinding.

Eventually, class ended, and he was able to retreat, away from those damnable smiles, to the teacher's office and peace and serenity and solitude and a paper cup on his desk.

Fate blinked. Why was there a paper cup on his desk?

"Excuse me," he asked one of the other teachers, whose name he'd never bothered to learn. "Did you happen to see who brought this in?"

"Oh, yes, actually," she replied. "I ... can't remember her name, but she's one of your class. They're sort of famous, you know," she added after the fashion of one revealing a great confidence. "Very nice of them, wouldn't you say? The latter day version of the apple on the desk."

"Yes," he replied, staring at the paper cup. "Thank you," he said absently.

The cup was warm to the touch, and he could detect a certain aroma from it. Beneath where it had been resting, there was a note.

 _Enjoy,_  it said, and then the name,  _Miyazaki._

He drank the coffee ...

... and discovered, somewhat to his amazement, that he could in fact hate her even more than he already did, for the coffee was everything that she'd said it was. It was as close to that first cup as anything he'd ever tasted.

These girls were going to  _pay_.

* * *

Yue found herself reflecting that it was just like old times as she watched Fate nearly dash out of the room at the end of their English lesson. That had been the way that their teachers had generally departed towards the end of their tenure as instructor to what was then 1-A. Since she liked Fate no more than anyone else, she supposed that was a good sign. But the faint smile on Nodoka's face as  _she_  watched Fate go was enough to make her rather nervous, even though it was the same faint smile she often had as she -

_Agh agh agh no bad thought no mustn't think about sexy times in class!_

"Yue-chan, why are you blushing like that?" Makie asked her curiously.

"I'm having a bad reaction to something I drank this morning," Yue replied hoarsely.  _And now I'm lying! I, who seek only the love of truth (philos sophia), am lying!_

"Ah," Makie said, nodding in complete understanding.

_And lying successfully, too!_

Then Makie frowned. "Nodoka-chan, why are you smiling like that when Yue-chan is so -"

Fortunately, Yue's prayers for dimensional invasion were both momentarily unheard and unnecessary, for another distraction presented itself. "Makie-san," said Chachamaru, walking up to the table where Makie and Ako sat together. "Might I intrude for a moment?"

"Ah? Oh, sure, Chachamaru-chan," the gymnast replied. "What's up?"

Chachamaru actually blinked at being addressed in that manner. There might, Yue thought, have been the slightest blush on those alabaster cheeks of hers. "In my role as Negi-sensei's personal assistant, I have been asked -" the gynoid began to narrate.

"What's that like?" Makie interjected.

"What is what like?" Chachamaru replied, blinking again.

"Being Negi-kun's personal assistant. Is it fun?"

"... it is somewhat trying, particularly the parts where I attempt to arrange meetings for him with certain people," Chachamaru answered with total honesty. "However, the emotional satisfaction of being of use to sensei is a considerable incentive. I wish that I could be of similar use to other persons for whom I care as much, but they are proving reluctant."

"Wow," said Makie, clearly fascinated. She glimpsed Chisame reading a text book upside down with somewhat shaky hands and wondered what that was all about.

"In any event, as I was saying, sensei has asked me to arrange a meeting between himself, yourself, and Akira-san." The gynoid paused, as though reflecting, and then added, "Ako-san, you and Yuna-san might wish to be present as well."

"Ah?" replied Ako, who had been doing her level best to pretend that she wasn't listening in on the conversation that was going on right beside her, and might possibly have convinced a small, not particularly clever child that she wasn't doing so.

"Matters of interest to all four of you will be discussed in the castle today after school," Chachamaru concluded.

* * *

Makie didn't like frowning, both because she was a naturally cheerful soul and because she'd heard that frowning put stress on the wrong muscles in one's face. But she was frowning now, at least partially because she had the sensation that she'd considered her reasons for disliking frowning fairly recently, and didn't want to get into a rut when it came to her thoughts.

"Makie, what's wrong?" Akira asked as the four of them walked through the forest together.

"Doesn't this seem a bit strange?" she asked, pausing to turn and look at Akira, Ako and Yuna. "If Negi-kun wanted to talk to us, why didn't he just come to us himself? Why go through this 'matters of interest' business with Chachamaru-chan?"

"He's probably just busy," Akira replied.

"But, I mean, if he was busy but still needed to talk to us, why not just use the Pactio to, to ... um ... what's the word?" she asked after some hemming and hawing.

"You mean, to contact us telepathically?" Ako supplied.

"Hwee, that's a whole phrase," Makie groaned. "Shouldn't there be a simple word for it? Anyway, yeah, that. He could have just done that if he needed to let us know something in a hurry."

Akira coughed politely.

"I mean, all of us have pactios and we all did that so we could help Negi-kun and -" Makie continued on heedlessly.

Now Akira coughed a little impolitely.

"Are you okay?" Makie asked, momentarily forgetting her own concerns as she became worried about her friend.

 _Why did I try to be subtle?_  Akira thought wearily.  _Why?_  "Makie," she continued aloud. "I don't have a pactio with him. Remember?"

"Oh, yeah," the gymnast said. Then blinked, grinned. "Well, that explains it then! He wanted to make sure that we all got the news at the same time but couldn't be there himself, and since he couldn't do a telepath thingy with Akira-chan, he had to use Chachamaru-chan to send it the old fashioned way! Makes perfect sense, don't you think?"

"I honestly didn't give it much thought," Yuna replied. Ako nodded.

"Well, however much thought you gave it -" Makie started to say, turning back to the pathway.

"YOU GOT THAT WRONG!" Haruna declared as she dropped down out of the trees to dangle upside down in front of them.

"GYAAH!" replied three out of four sports girls.

"Haruna ... what are you doing in that tree?" Akira asked after a moment of silent contemplation.

"Oh, just -"

"And please don't say 'hanging around'."

Haruna pouted. "I am attempting," she continued, with an air of wounded dignity, "to reclaim my dynamic entry schtick, that Nodo-chan has so cruelly usurped of late. How'm I doing?"

"... I'd give it an eight," Makie supplied.

"Harsh!"

"How the heck are you doing that?" Yuna asked, staring in amazement.

"Grace and skill!" Haruna replied proudly.

"No, not the, the hanging upside down bit, I'm pretty sure even Ako could manage that."

"Gee, thanks," said Ako, in a tone that was neither 'gee' nor very thankful.

"You're welcome," Yuna replied absently, and blissfully ignored Ako's Akira-interrupted attempt to throttle her. "Anyway, Haruna, I'm talking about your skirt! Why the heck isn't it dangling around your neck?" She pointed to where said garment's hemline was cheerfully - if a skirt could be said to be cheerful, which, given that it was Haruna's skirt and shared her tendencies, this one probably was - defying gravity and resting against Haruna's knees.

"Oh, that. Magic," Haruna replied, not-quite-so-proudly.

"Pretty convenient magic," Yuna said, a bit enviously.

"Isn't it though," Haruna nearly cooed, basking in the envy.

"I'm glad that we've got that settled," Akira said, raising her voice just a bit as she held Ako, who'd stopped struggling and was now just glaring and muttering. "Now, what do you mean, Makie is wrong about why Negi-sensei wants to see us?"

"Rejoice, for I bring you tidings of good news. For one of you, anyway, the rest are probably going to be all jealous and upset. Ahem." She resumed her oratorical tone. "In my very own hearing, Negi-kun has admitted that he has a favorite, a girl who commands his affections more than any others, and that he would be confessing his feelings to them today! And behold, has he not invited you four to attend him? Thus it must be that the girl of his choosing is ... one of you!"

Three out of four sports girls gaped.

"Wow, Haruna-chan, I can't believe you fell for that," Makie replied calmly.

Behind her glasses (as golem as the rest of her clothes and defying gravity in the same way) Haruna blinked. "Huh?" she said, still sounding oratorical.

"I mean, really?" Makie continued, shaking her head. "Think it over, will you? Do you think Negi-kun is dumb?"

"Well, he's emotionally stunted and has numerous blind spots -" Haruna began.

"But you don't think he's dumber than you?" Makie pressed.

"I don't think intelligence can really be quantified as such -"

Makie let out a long sigh. "Oh, Haruna-chan. If Negi-kun, who is way smarter than either of us, voluntarily admitted to liking someone in front of  _you_ ,  _knowing_  what you'd do in response, don't you think he'd also arrange for some sort of distraction to keep you from interfering with the private meeting he'd want to have with that girl?" She shook her head. "Whatever happened to the clever and witty Haruna-chan of yesteryear? Where have you gone, Joe diMaggaggio?" she asked, sounding wistful.

"There's actually only one 'aggio' in that guy's name," Yuna supplied while Haruna gaped.

"Holy crap!" Haruna snapped, dropping from the tree and somersaulting in mid-air to land on her feet. "That's amazing, Makicchi! I can't believe I ... oh, sweet Nagai's pen! He could be confessing to Nodochin  _right now_  and I'd be missing it! Gyah!" she concluded, and then dashed off.

"You mean, we were just a distraction?" Ako asked, quietly.

Makie waited until she was certain that Haruna was out of earshot, then squealed. "I can't believe I just conned Haruna-chan!" She grabbed hold of Ako and hugged her. "It's you, Ako-chan! It has to be you!"

"What?" Ako asked.

"I just hope it's not me," Yuna said, shrugging. "That could really mess things up."

* * *

"Explain it to me again, please," Ako asked as they approached the cottage.

"Good grief, how is it that I'm the baka and everyone else has always gotten good grades?" Makie sighed. "As I said,  _three times_  now, you're the only one of us that Negi-sensei has spent a lot of time around when he was aged up like he is now. Since he didn't have a favorite before he was aged up, it must have been the aging up that made him have a favorite! So if he has a favorite, and it's one of us, then it's definitely definitely  _definitely_  got to be the one he'd spent the most amount of time around when he was the way that he is now. Honestly, Ako, are you fishing for compliments or something?"

Ako looked away.

"... oh my gosh, you totally are!"

It was time, Ako decided, for a change of subject. "Um, Akira?" she said. "Are you okay?"

Akira blinked, and then said the first thing she'd said since Haruna had made her revelation. "I'm fine. I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be fine? I'm fine." She nodded quickly. "I'm fine," she said yet again.

A quick exchange of glances among the other three established a consensus of opinion with regards to Akira's state of being fine. But when Ako spoke next, it was to discuss another matter. "Okay, then ... Yuna, what exactly did you mean by 'that could mess things up'?"

To her credit, Yuna recognized that Ako was trying to give Akira a moment to calm down before returning to the discussion of Akira's obvious not-all-that-fine status. It was a good tactic, and Ako deserved praise for it. However, Yuna felt it would have been a much better tactic if Ako had decided to pick on Makie. "Well, it, it would, uh, mess things up, y'know?"

"... no, I don't know. That's why I asked."

"Okay," Yuna sighed. "Cards on the table. I don't like Negi-kun the way that the rest of you do."

"Of course you do," Akira said rapidly. "Since all of us just want to be good friends with him, and so do you, right? Right?"

 _Not such a good tactic, after all,_  Yuna mused. "Right," she said aloud. "Anyway, so if he likes me, that's going to be tricky, since I just want to be good friends. And I think I can do better."

Akira broke off in mid-nod. It was honestly a bit frightening to see someone do that.

"You can do better?" Makie asked, astounded. "What the heck? It's not like you've ever actually had a boyfriend!"

"Maybe I have one and just didn't tell you," Yuna said, sniffing a bit.

"Of course you'd tell us!" Makie replied, incredulously. "You tell us everything!"

"Maybe I do and maybe I don't," Yuna added, sniffing a bit more.

"Yes, you totally do, and -"

"Fascinating as I find this discussion," interjected a voice from the cottage's front door, "could you four hurry up and get in here already."

They looked up.

"... wow, Eva-sama, do you really wear that sort of thing in public?" Makie asked. "And why do I keep calling you Eva-sama?"

For her part, Evangeline considered the sundress she'd thrown on when she went to go wait for the sports club girls to be perfectly suitable for public display, if a little lacking in the frills and lace department. Then again, she was vaguely aware that her standards of modesty were somewhat divergent from social norms. Then yet again, the social norms of what she still viewed as a prison of sorts were not really something she chose to consider, very often.

"Yes, I do," she replied to Sasaki's first block of spoken words. "Congratulations on getting out here without Saotome managing to follow you here, I guess." She was out a few meal tickets on the wager she'd made with Kagurazaka, who'd had the temerity to suggest that Sasaki of all people would get Saotome off their backs. If that absurdity had actually happened, she honestly didn't want to know about it; losing money on their unaccompanied arrival was bad enough.

"Is Negi-kun already here?" Sasaki asked.

"He's in the basement," Eva replied, with a jerk of her head back towards the building.

"... you have a basement?" Sasaki, Akashi and Izumi chorused in amazement. Okochi might have looked a bit perplexed, but even after three years it was hard for Evangeline to read that girl. (She probably would have found it easier if she gave a damn, but alas.)

"Oh, that's right," she said with mock surprise. "You don't know about all of that yet." Frankly, the sheer amount of 'all of that' that these silly girls didn't know about could fill volumes, trips to Mars notwithstanding. She supposed that them not knowing about how she'd used them as her slaves was what even she had to consider a 'good' thing, even if Sasaki's annoying innocent references to that episode never ceased to frustrate her. Well, they were about to take another step into a much larger universe -

"Um," Okochi hemmed, interrupting Eva's internal lead-up to an external rant. "You ... don't have sensei tied up in your basement, do you?"

Everyone stared at her.

"No," Evangeline answered precisely if not completely. A complete answer would be 'not any more.' On learning that her pupil had genuine romantic feelings for someone, she had quite naturally set out to discover the identity of that someone, solely for the aesthetic joy of learning the truth and not with any ideas about exploiting whatever bonds might exist for any sadistic purposes whatsoever. And she had used various tactics towards that end, but, to her deep frustration, none had worked. The boy had insisted that the girl in question would be the first to learn the truth, and she had had to settle for knowing only that it was one of the candidates who had been invited to her home this day - which had included a few girls besides these four already.

That said, she was quite sure that no confession had yet been made. As she led the four girls into her home and down the stairs into her basement, conscious all the while of the expression on Okochi's face which suggested, even to her unlearned perceptions, that the tall girl suspected the worst of her - how refreshing! - she honestly wasn't sure that one of them was to be the one.

She'd honestly expected it to be Chachamaru, but surely he wouldn't employ her in his plans if that was the case.

"Um, Evangeline-san?" Akashi asked as they walked down the hallway. "Are you sure you don't know who it is?"

"Ah, so you know what this is all about, then?" she asked carelessly. They knew that, but not - honestly, it was getting to the point where even she needed a scorecard to keep track of who knew what. "No, he won't tell me."

"Huh. You think maybe it's you?"

Evangeline tripped over a sunbeam and fell facefirst on the cement flooring of her basement corridor of dolls.

"I guess not -"

A terrible sound came from the girl who was lying down. It took a while for them to recognize it as an attempt at laughter.

"Oh, wow," Evangeline said after a moment, rolling over onto her back. "Thanks, Akashi, I didn't even know that I needed that. Hilarious joke. Yeah, no that could never happen. Hehehehe, him in love with me, schnrk." After that odd noise, Evangeline started to get up.

"I wasn't -" Yuna started to say, then found it hard to speak with Akira's hand over her mouth.

 _Nono, nono,_  Akira's head shook rapidly.

"So ... he's in there, waiting for us?" Makie asked, staring at the globe.

Evangeline frowned. Show the girl a masterpiece of magic, and what did she want to know? Whether a boy was there. So annoying. "Yes, him and a few of your classmates who were already in on this particular secret. You might want to hurry, otherwise whichever one of you it is might end up having him stolen from you by a more pushy person.."

"Like who?"

* * *

" **MORON!**  Chisame shrieked at a Negi-shaped hole in the wall.

"You're taking this better than I thought," came the weak voice from the other side of the hole.

"Okay," Chisame growled, eyes fixed on a point on the wall behind the hole she'd just made. "Okay. I suppose I can't really blame you for Asakura. In fact, from what you're saying, someone might even argue that ... that ... was ... my fault," she concluded, very slowly.

"I wouldn't say that," Negi said, peeking up from the bottom of the hole.

"I said  _someone_  might!" Deeeep breath. "And I guess that I can't really blame you for Miyazaki and Ayase. Or even Ku or Nagase. Or Iinchou, though that's realllly pushing it." Yet another deeeep breath. "But Saotome? Aisaka?  _All three cheerleaders?_  And Saotome? And Chachamaru?!"

"You said Saotome twice -"

"She's  _at least_  twice as bad as anything else, with the possible exception of Chachamaru!" Chisame roared.

"It's so nice that you're concerned for my virtue, Chisame-san," said gynoid commented as she returned from the brief excursion to pick up building materials she'd had the foresight to take when she'd heard Negi telling Chisame he had something to tell her. "Negi-sensei, if you will please step out of the hole in the wall, I will get to work on repairing it."

"Oh, yes, of course," Negi said, and promptly did so.

"What virtue?" Chisame demanded belatedly. "And how did that even happen, for pity's sake?"

"... would you like a demonstration?" Chachamaru asked as she picked up the trowel, with a brick in the other hand.

"No!" Chisame snapped. "Hell no! If there was something stronger than hell no -"

"Fuck no?" Chachamaru suggested.

Chisame stared in stunned silence.

"It would seem to fill your requirements."

"Gyaggghh," Chisame replied. "What the hell happened to you? You said that you  _couldn't_  do that kind of thing!"

Having opening the jar of enchanted mortar - guaranteed to remain wet until applied to brick, and then quickly setting - Chachamaru shrugged. "Kaede-sensei guided me to a superior understanding of the the processes involved."

"You ... I ... what?" Chisame's words finally stumbled to a halt as she gaped some more. " _Kaede-sensei_?" she finally repeated.

"She certainly taught me a few things," Chachamaru mused aloud as she began applying the mortar, setting the brick down once she judged there was enough. She then gave Chisame a look. "Are you sure you don't want a demonstration?"

"No!"

"You're not sure?"

"Yes I'm sure! Keep it up and you're next on the 'going through the wall' list, robot chick!"

"No fight- oh, who am I kidding?" Negi asked wearily.

"All right, fine, whatever. The past is the past," Chisame said, irritably watching Chachamaru brick up the hole. "But you went and invited those four here ... why exactly?"

"I need to talk to them and ... well,  _try_  to explain this situation." He took a deep breath of his own. "And ... Akira-san made it clear to me that Makie-san and Ako-san were in love with me, so I think I need to resolve that, one way or another -"

"'One way or another'," Chisame repeated, sarcastically, without looking at him.

"- before I'm ready to tell ... the girl that I like the most ... how I really feel," Negi concluded.

Chisame said absolutely nothing. She stood there and watched Chachamaru doing brickwork without any sign that the robot girl had heard anything.  _She's probably good at that,_  Chisame thought.  _Or maybe she can actually turn off her own audio receptors. Lucky wench._  "And?" she prompted after a long moment.

"And?" Negi repeated confusedly.

"And who is she?" Chisame asked, still not looking at him.

"I made a promise to myself that I'd tell her first, and that I wouldn't do that until -"

"You've got a whole long checklist worked out, don't you?" she interjected, finally deigning to glance in his direction.

"Not ... a  _long_  checklist," Negi protested faintly

"Whatever," Chisame replied, turning away again. "You've fulfilled this step, so -"

"Not quite," Negi interjected right back, then hesitated for a while. "Chisame ... I think that there's a good chance that the girl in question will, once she knows the whole story, be disgusted with me. And ... if that happens, I might ..." He trailed off.

"You've got a backup plan?" she asked, still not looking at him.

"It seemed like a good idea."

Chisame just shook her head. "Of course it did. Of course you do." She let out a gust-like sigh. "Okay. Whatever. Go kiss your problems into submission, or whatever it is you think you're going to do."Another long pause. "I'll be waiting to help you pick up the pieces afterwards."

"Thank you, Chisame," Negi said softly, then turned and left the room quickly.

Chachamaru finally turned to look at Chisame and opened her mouth.

"Not one word from you."

The gynoid considered, then placed a hand over her mouth. "Muhmbuhs uhnt wuhds," she mumbled. "Oooooo luuhgh huhm."

"Overly literal -" Chisame began to roar.

* * *

What Negi needed was a moment to decompress after that emotional confrontation and the start of the next one. Actually, what he needed was a trip to a magical land where no one's feelings were ever even in the slightest danger of being hurt and the ability to stay there for all time. (Of course as he thought this, his inner Evangeline drop-kicked the rest of his consciousness for even momentarily imagining such an absurdity. His inner Evangeline was startlingly like Chisame in her younged-down form.) Be that as it may, what he needed (or just plain wanted, if we were being totally honest) and what the universe was giving him were two very different things.

This was promptly demonstrated demonstrated by the way that, after leaving the hallway where he'd been speaking with Chisame and Chachamaru, he arrived in the castle's entryway where Evangeline was escorting the four sports girls into the inner circles of her inner home with the faint superior smile she usually had while showing it off for the first time. They, of course, were gawking like tourists - except for Akira, also of course, who was keeping her own gaze firmly focused on the back of Evangeline's head. To Negi, it looked like she was regarding a rare and dangerous animal whose behavior was not at all friendly.

"Ah, thank you, Master," he said, drawing all their attentions to himself.

"Negi-kun!" Makie promptly cried out, and before he could even remotely prepare himself, she dashed across the hall to where he was standing and grabbed hold of him in a tight hug, pressing her face against his upper chest.

"Goodness!" he said, genuinely startled, though not enough to stop him from hugging her back. "Makie-san -"

"I'm so happy to see you again, Negi-kun!" she exclaimed. "I was so worried when you didn't even try to get involved in the festival! I thought for sure that we must have really upset you with what we did to Fate-sensei, so much that you'd decided that you didn't want anything to do with us after that!"

Negi flushed. Of course, he  _had_  tried to get involved in the festival, but just of course, there was no way that Fei or Kaede or any of the others would have revealed what had been going on behind the girls' backs. "No, no, I'm not mad about any of that. I'm not happy," he added quickly. "But I'm not mad, either. And I hope that you're all doing your best to try and get along with Fate."

"Um," said Yuna, who'd broken down and asked Nodoka why she was smiling so much, and found what she'd been told to be just freaking hilarious.

"Um," said Ako, who was staring at Nagi - no, Negi - no, technically,  _both_  and didn't honestly give two hoots about getting along with Fate.

"Um," said Makie, who wanted to fit in.

Akira just kept staring at the back of Evangeline's head. For her part, Evangeline was finding it very hard to resist the impulse to turn around and, in full scary-face style, tell the girl to take a picture as it would last longer.

"Well, I'm glad we've got that settled. Now ... I'm sure you're all wondering why I called you here." He winced inwardly at the cliche, and took a moment to glance at Evangeline, giving her a thankful look which also tried to communicate the notion that he wanted some privacy.

She returned it with feigned obliviousness, fluttering her eyelashes.

He shifted momentarily to a pleading expression.

Shaking her head, Evangeline announced, "I think I'm going to leave you five to it, then. I'm going to go have a swim. In my very large private pool that I hardly ever let anyone else use, unless they kiss my feet. You know the one, right, boya?" The sheer bliss she felt from the strangled noises she could hear Okochi making almost made up for not being able to watch the conflagration about to erupt.

"Thank you, Master," Negi said, with genuine gratitude, as she left the foyer. "Okay ... I need to come clean with all of you, and I should warn you that I've been doing things that you might think are ... well ... bad."

"Oh, come on, how bad could it possibly be?" Makie asked cheerfully.

There was a long pause.

"Um ... Makie-san, I know that you're smarter than that, so why did you say that?" Negi asked.

"I don't know, it just seemed appropriate," the girl admitted, looking horribly embarrassed.

* * *

"Wow," Makie said several minutes later, as she stared at the whiteboard that Negi had found somewhere when he decided he needed to illustrate certain aspects of the situation. "That's really bad." She had the odd feeling of having done this before, even though she was also fairly sure that she never had.

Negi looked at the whiteboard, looked away again, and nodded.  _That_  seemed weirdly familiar, too.

Beside Makie, Ako and Yuna were also gaping at the outline of the situation. So was Akira - sort-of. Nobody who didn't know the tall swimmer really well would have thought that her jaw was perfectly steady and that her face was maybe just a touch paler than than ordinary. But Makie, who did know Akira really well, recognized the signs of shocked horror in her eyes and in her face.

Ironically, the quietest of them was the first to find her voice. "You ... you did  _it_  with all of these girls?" Ako asked.

"Yes," Negi admitted. "Though not all at the same time. Yet," he added somewhat involuntarily.

Years later, Makie would swear that she hear something actually literally snapping right before what happened next. "Not  _yet_?" Akira shouted at the top of her lungs.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Yuna said, trying to calm their friend down. "He was just making a pretty bad joke, weren't you, Negi-kun?"

"Well, no, I -"

"How could make jokes about this, sensei?" Akira cut him off with another shout. "How could you - how could you do  _any_  of this? You've betrayed your responsibilities as a teacher! You've shattered the innocence of so many of these girls! You've broken -" And then, quite suddenly, Akira fell back, almost collapsing to the floor.

"Akira-san!" Negi cried as he reached out for her.

"Don't touch me!" she yelled without looking at him. "I ... I can't even  _look_  at you right now!" Unsteadily, Akira pushed herself back to her feet and half-ran, half-stumbled towards the exit from the hallway that Evangeline had used.

Negi's hand, extended towards where Akira had been up until a few moments ago, stayed in that position for several moments. "No," he said softly. "Oh, no no no."

"It's, it's okay, Negi-kun!" Yuna said, trying without a whole lot of success to sound reassuring. "She's just upset! I'm sure she doesn't really hate you!"

"Oh, no no no," Negi repeated, hand coming up to cover his face.

"That's not really expressing a great deal of confidence in me, you know!" Yuna groaned.

"Oh," said Makie, who, like Ako, had only been able to watch all of this in stunned silence. Akira never lost it like that. It was beyond shocking to watch. And even more than that ... "Ohhhh," she said again, turning to look at Ako. "I am so, so very sorry, Ako."

"Huh?" Ako gasped, meeting Makie's gaze. "Why are you apologizing to  _me_?"

"Because I was wrong," Makie admitted. "I was so sure ... but I've been completely misreading the situation, and I got your hopes up for nothing. I'm so sorry." She shook her head, then walked over to where Negi was standing, with his hands still over his face.

"Negi-kun," she said, sounding more serious than any of them had ever heard her sound before now. "I need you to look at me, okay?"

He lowered his hand and his devastated-looking eyes met hers.

"Yeah, I get it now," she said, nodding. "The girl you were going to confess to, the one you really love ... it's Akira. Isn't it?"

"... no," Negi said, and prepared to say,  _It's you._

Before he could do so, however, Makie bopped him on the head. "Not the time to be lying about this sort of thing, Negi-kun!" she said, sounding rather irate.

"But I -"

"It's obvious! It's obvious to everyone how much you feel for Akira!" She looked to Ako and Yuna for confirmation, and took their silent blank gazes as examples of it. "See?" she said triumphantly.

"Well, yes, I do have such - but -"

"I know, it's hard! It's sad, even! I bet you didn't even realize how you really felt until recently, didn't you?" As Negi gaped at this bizarre combination of accuracy and its opposite, Makie pressed on. "And so it isn't even really your fault, the way that you've blown it with that girl. Didn't you hear her saying that her heart was broken?"

"I don't think she did," Negi weakly replied.

"She was going to, as sure as eggs are eggs." Makie paused, becoming briefly uncertain. "It's not 'as sure as eggs is eggs', is it? That doesn't sound right."

"The former is more grammatically correct," the English teacher said dazedly.

"Whew. Anyway, yeah, Akira is heartbroken, and you should apologize and try to make it up to her, definitely, but you have to accept that you've probably blown your chances with her. It's a sad thing, like I said, but it is what it is. And maybe you should give her some space, too, so she can be mad at you in peace." Nodnod.

"... okay, then."

Makie now took a deep breath. "And ...  _while_  you're giving Akira some space ... even though you're not going to be able to make it work with her, you might just possibly be able to make it work with someone else. Someone else very close to you. Someone who has been watching over you with fond eyes for so long. Someone with pink hair."

"Makie!" Ako was finally moved to interject.

"Or blue," Makie continued as though she'd always intended to add that addendum. "Or, um, Yuna, would you say that your hair color is hazelnut?"

"Uh -"

"Yeah, hazelnut." She kept her eyes firmly on Negi's the whole while. "Someone who will love you no matter what."

"Yeah, 'bout that -" Yuna continued to interject.

"Yes, Negi-kun," Ako interrupted, coming forward to stand beside Makie. "There are girls like that in the world. Many of them. Many of them, here. Girls who appreciate your honesty, and -"

"Just a moment," Negi said, raising his hand. "Um ... is this going where I think it's going?"

Ako and Makie exchanged a look, then turned back to him, nodding rapidly.

"Of course it is," he sighed. "Oh well." He reached out around their shoulders and pulled them close to him, embracing them both tightly. "You are amazing," he said.

"Ooookay, then," Yuna said, as she watched the sucking of face commence, and began backing rather quickly towards the other end of the hallway. "I think someone really ought to go be, uh, perturbed, yeah, perturbed with Akira, and since I don't really want any ... yeah, I've got a boyfriend, you see, and -"

"Oh you do not," Makie said disgustedly as she pulled back from the deep kiss so that Ako could get some as well.

"Yeah I do, I just haven't - oh, screw it, include me out!" And with that, she departed.

"Oh, Negi-kun," Ako moaned, heedless of Yuna's departure. "I wish you'd had this realization when you were pretending to be Nagi-san. That would have been so much sweeter."

Negi blinked in confusion, unsure of what she meant by that, since he couldn't see how it would have made a difference to the heartbreak Ako had endured then. Well, now wasn't the time to address the matter. He kissed Ako back, hand moving down her back to gently caress her buttocks. Doing so made her moan into his mouth.

Meanwhile, Makie had generously and not out of any selfish intent to do anything with Negi before Ako could, kissed her way down his chest until she was kneeling in front of his trousers, then started undoing his belt and pulling aside his boxers so that she could -

Well, whatever she had been  _planning_  to do, what she did was gape, and, in the sort of tone normally reserved for utterances of profound religious truths, say, "Homina homina homina homina."

Ako rolled her eyes as she kissed Negi, annoyed at Makie's exuberant overreaction. "Oh, come on Makie, how big could it possibly baaaaaahhhhhhhh?" she asked as she pulled back and looked down and saw the answer to her question.

"We don't have to do anything if you don't want to," Negi said, sounding vaguely bored.

"Huh?" Ako said, head jerking up to stare at him. "Negi-kun?"

"I'm sorry, it's just that I nearly always say that in these situations, and it never makes the least bit of difference so I don't know why I bother," he answered sadly. "It's really starting to get to me, a little. I'm sorry," he repeated himself.

"Oh, Negi-kun," Ako moaned. "You're so sweet."

"And savory, too!" Makie chimed in, eyes dancing. The surprise had been considerable, but now that she'd had a chance to examine the member that would be parting her folds, surprise had been superseded by excitement. It was wayyyyy bigger than the baton she'd used to masturbate that one time, and  _warm_ , too. And - lick! - yep, savory! Without further ado, she took it into her mouth and began sucking with the same enthusiasm she confronted everything that interested her.

Now Negi moaned into Ako's mouth, which startled her enough to pull back from the kiss she was presently sharing with him to stare first at him, and then down at Makie. "Wha - Makie, how are you -" she stammered.

"Schlorp!" replied Makie, hands working on the portions of the shaft she couldn't fit into her mouth and going back to tickle the dangly bits behind it. She pulled back to give a somewhat more coherent answer. "Come on, Ako-chan, it's not rocket magic!"

"R-r-rocket magic?" Ako repeated.

"Magic trumps science, rocket science is the toughest kind of science, so rocket magic is the toughest kind of magic," Makie "explained". Then went back to sucking dick.

"... is that true?" Ako asked Negi.

"Maybe," Negi blissfully replied.

"Maybe?" Ako mouthed back at him. Then shook her head, wondering what she was thinking. Makie often had that effect on her, she wearily realized. Judging from the expression on Negi's face, she was having a similar effect on him, if not one that left him even less aware of the world around him. Really, she'd been lucky to get even a 'maybe' out of him.

Well, then, her course was clear. So she kissed him once more, for luck, and then dropped down to where Makie was kneeling and -

Whatever she'd been  _planning_  to do, what she did was gape as Makie let it drop from her mouth, licked her lips and breathily declared, "I think it's ready. Negi-kun, will you please make me a woman?"

"Ahhhh," Ako managed to say.

Makie blinked. "Oh," she said. Then, more sadly, "Oh ... yeah, you're right, Ako-chan."

"I am?"

Makie nodded, then looked up at Negi again. "On second thought, you should do it with Ako-chan first. She liked you first." She nodded somberly.

"No, no, that's not right, you liked him before I met Nagi and -" Ako said reflexively before the saner portions of her mind could shriek at her to stop.

"Oh! That's right!" Makie said, cheerful once more, and promptly stood up and started pulling down her panties. "Thank you, Ako!"

 _AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA_  went Ako's internal monologue.

Moments later, as Negi was pumping into Makie forcefully, with her back set against the hallway wall, one of her legs wrapped around his back while the ankle of the other was wrapped over his shoulder, in a way to give most gymnasts fits, Ako found she had recovered enough poise as to understand her own internal monologue.

_\- don't understand it, that's what was supposed to happen in these situations, back and forth and back and forth like table tennis balls, until finally someone gets tired of listening to humility one-upmanship and just makes a choice, but it wasn't supposed to be her choice but his and now he's doing it with her right in front of me while I sit here on the floor and watch with googly eyes and listen to her squealing like that and AAAAAAA -_

Well, it was understandable for a while, anyway.

"So pretty," Negi gasped. "So, very, pretty!"

"Ahhh!" Makie cried in release and genuine appreciation. "Thank you, Negi-kun! Am I as pretty as Akira? Am I?"

"I - really - don't - want - to talk - about - her!"

"Oops!" she giggled, not sounding terribly apologetic, but he supposed that sexual ecstasy didn't combine very well with that in any event. (Did that mean that lust meant never having to say you're sorry? That would explain a few things.) "Ahhhh!" she wailed a moment later.

"Makie - I'm going to - going to -"

"What? What?"

And with that he groaned and spewed up into her.

"Ohhhhhh," Makie moaned in pleasure at the new warmth within her. Then a realization, and a somewhat shorter, "Oh! You were asking if ... oh. Oh. Um ... you'll take responsibility, right?"

"Of course," Negi assured her.

"Good, good ... um, what does that mean, though? I've just heard it on soap operas, and they never really explain -"

Whamwhamwham went Ako's head over the sounds of Negi explaining what it meant.

"Wow, really?" Makie asked.

He nodded.

She smacked him on the head. "Negi-kun you dummy! I'm fifteen, I don't want to get married yet! Sheesh! I mean, I wouldn't mind the wedding dress thing, or the introducing you to my parents bits, or - but that's not important right now!" Makie quickly continued once she realized that Negi was starting to look just a bit panicky. "What I mean is, when you do it with Ako-chan, you shouldn't do that! And you should, very soon - well, I mean, you shouldn't do that when you do everything else, which you should, very soon - just as soon as I wait wait wait why isn't it going down?" she asked after clambering off of him and gazing down at his still-present erection.

"Well -" Negi started to reply.

"It's supposed to go down," Makie said, then lifted her face to look at him uncertainly. "It is, right? This isn't something that gets left out like the meaning of taking responsibility or just what you do with the feather duster once you've got it, right? Negi-kun, is there something wrong with you?"

"... I honestly don't know how to answer that question," the emotionally disturbed and prematurely aged superhuman undying immortal replied. Before Makie could express further concern, however, he coughed and continued. "What I mean is, this is pretty much how things work for me."

"But ... I mean, that's not  _right_ ," she said. "Ako-chan, back me up here."

Ako was lying face first on the ground nearby and didn't immediately respond.

"Ako-chan?" Makie repeated, turning to look at her.

"Hm?" Ako asked, looking up to show a mild bruise on her forehead.

"What happened?" asked an appalled Makie.

"Oh, I slipped," Ako lied. "What were you asking?"

"Uhh," Makie hesitated, looked at Negi, then looked back at Ako. Now, she decided, was perhaps not the best time to seek medical advice. "I, I was just saying that it's your turn, now."

Ako rose from prone to crouch rather quickly. "Really?" she asked anxiously.

"Of course!" Makie assured her. "Who do think I am, Yuna?"

Negi sighed and shook his head. "I wish you girls wouldn't be as mean to each other as you can sometimes be. You're all supposed to be friends, not people who just know and tolerate each other. How would you like it if someone said things like that about you, behind your back? That isn't a friendly thing to do. All the fighting and backstabbing and cruel jokes that have been happening lately are really doing bad things to your group dynamics, and it all makes me very unhappy in the bargain. So please stop doing that sort of thing," he concluded, nodding and in the process bumping his head against the floor. "Wait, wasn't I just now standing up? How did I end up lying on the floor like this?" he asked.

"We moved you to that position while you were lecturing us on morality," Makie cheerfully informed him as she knelt with her knees on either side of his head while Ako moved over him. "It must have been very distracting for you."

"I guess so," Negi replied as Ako slid herself onto him, letting out a tiny cry as her maidenhead ruptured.

"Silly Negi-kun," Makie said fondly, tapping his noise with her finger. "We can do all that stuff  _because_  we're true friends. True friends understand that pointing out each other's flaws isn't hurtful, it's helpful. It keeps us from taking ourselves too seriously. It clears the air! It relieves tension. It's wonderful. Wow, I bet I could really help a lot of people who have problems making friends. Maybe I should write a book or something! What do you think, Ako?"

Ako, who'd just had several orgasms and provoked another ejaculation from Negi, thought (again) that she really was doomed to be a supporting character. So of course what she said, a bit dazedly, was, "Great idea, Makie."

"Aw, thanks! But - ahhh!" Makie cried once she realized what had just happened. "Negi-kun, you did it again!"

"I'm sorry, I was sort of distracted by the lecture on friendship I was receiving," Negi replied, honestly and  _maybe just a bit_  snarkily. He had been around Chisame quite a bit recently, after all. "Ako, I -"

"That's all right," Ako mused absently as she leaned over him, absent-mindedly drawing designs on his chest with her fingernail. "I'm sure you didn't mean to get distracted by Makie."

Makie's face was a picture, likely to be titled 'The shock' when displayed in a gallery. "You mean it's my fault?" she peeped.

"Maybe ... maybe to make up for it, we could do it again?" Ako asked speculatively. "Um ... not, not right away," she added quickly. "In a little bit, I mean."

Negi nodded. "Of course. Um, if you wanted to, you and Makie could enjoy yourselves together while I -"

"Ew!" Ako exclaimed, pulling away. "Negi-kun, I know you've probably been spending a lot of time with Konoka-san and Setsuna-san, but not all girls want to do stuff with other girls!"

"... really? That hasn't been my experience at all," Negi replied.

"Well, they don't!" Ako repeated. "Makie, tell - argh. Makie, snap out of it!" she yelled at Makie, who'd gone off to sit in a corner, curled up in a ball facing away from the two of them, murmuring something about it being her fault.

"Nyah?" Makie asked, lifting her head and turning to look back at them.

"You don't want to do sex stuff with me, do you?" Ako asked sharply.

"... I'm good with it," Makie answered bewilderedly.

"See, she doesnnnnnnwha?" Ako triumphantly told Negi, until the actual nature of the answer she'd just been given registered.

"You're cute, so why wouldn't I want to have sex with you?"

Ako tried, for a few moments, to process that remark ... without notable success.

"If I might make a suggestion," Negi said diffidently. "I think there's a way for us all to be happy."

Moments later, as Ako was lying on her back on the floor, with Makie crouched on top of her, writhing against her, while Negi was behind the pair of them, pushing his member up between them, into the 'bowl', she guessed it could be called, made by their abdomens pressing against each other ... she was still trying to process that remark. As Makie, driven to ecstasy by the sensations she was feeling, bent down to press her lips to Ako's, the blue-haired girl decided she was never going to be able to manage it, and just gave up.

Makie had that effect on her.

* * *

She'd just ran.

She didn't know this building. She didn't know where she was going, or what was in her way, or what hidden horrors she might stumble onto - though she doubted that anything she might find would upset her anymore than she already had been. She only knew that she could not be where she was, and so she ran.

She was vaguely aware that the course of her run took her past Evangeline, but aside from a flutter of recognition, she hadn't even paused at the sight of the other girl. She had no idea what she would have said to her if she had - accusations that all of this was somehow her fault, perhaps. Unfair, but nothing save that girl's hair itself seemed all that fair at the moment. No, it was better that she'd kept right on going, not even glancing in Evangeline's direction.

(For her part, Evangeline had felt something strangely familiar as she'd glimpsed the girl running with a look of unspeakable sorrow on her face. How many times had she found herself running away from something unspeakable in just that way? Almost, she'd reached out to her. Almost, she'd considered offering some vague, empty solace. What would have happened if she had? Most likely, she told herself later, that gesture would have been repaid with anger and dismissal, as it had on other times she'd reached out to another in empathy. Most likely. Most likely.)

And then she could run no more. Not from fatigue, but from lack of room to run. She supposed that she could have flung herself out from the platform where they'd appeared in this strange little world, but she found that she didn't want to test the possibility that this was in fact just a horrible dream from which she'd awaken to something better. So she reached that edge and then stopped herself, standing there staring out over it for quite some time, and then crumpling to the floor to continue doing so.

There did she abide a while.

Eventually, her empty, thoughtless observation of the patterns of the tides in the false sea was interrupted by a voice. "Akira-san?" he asked from behind her.

She tensed. Slowly, she turned. "Negi-kun, you -" she began to say.

Then she saw what he was doing. Down on his knees, face and palms of his hands pressed to the ground, the savior of two worlds genuflected towards her. "I am sorry," he said. "For what I have done, for destroying your good opinion of me in doing it, I am profoundly and utterly sorry."

"What are you -"

"I know that I can never apologize enough. I know that you probably hate me now. I know -"

"I don't hate you," Akira interrupted. "I ... I don't hate you. I -"  _\- love you,_  she wanted to say,  _love you still, love you helplessly, love you more than I can ever say._  "- hurt," she said instead. "I  _am_  hurt by all of this, but I don't think I ever could hate you, Negi-kun."

He lifted his head enough to peek up at her. "Really?" he peeped.

"Really," she echoed, holding in a squeal at how cute he was acting right at the moment.

He let out a shuddering sigh. "Thank you, Akira-san," he said as he rolled up from his supine pose to sit seiza before her. "You can't imagine how much that means to me. Out of all the girls in the class, you were the one I least wanted to disappoint or upset."

Akira's heart stopped beating.

"I mean, I really, really like Makie," he continued, shattering what had just stopped. "And I respect her. She's just ... amazing, the way that she understands people - something I've had to learn the hard way, which she seems to have always just gotten - so, of course, I respect her. But I have to admit that I was a lot more concerned about the possibility of losing your good opinion than I was about the idea that she might not return my feelings. You're so much wiser than the other girls in our class, almost as wise as Satsuki-san ... I didn't want someone like you to hate me."

"Uh-huh," said Akira, to whom the prospect of stepping off the edge of the platform was looking better with each word uttered by the boy. She forced herself to ask a question. "Did you tell Makie -"

"I didn't get a chance," he admitted ruefully. "She's ... there are holes in her understanding of people, I guess, but no one is perfect, right? So she thinks that I'm actually in love with you. She just wouldn't let me tell her the truth." He shook his head. "I think ... I think I'm going to try again when you graduate. Maybe things will work out better, then."

"That's a good idea," Akira told him softly.

"You think so?" he asked. "Yes, that's the best option. Thank you, Akira-san. I hope I can repair your good opinion -"

"Don't ... don't talk about that, right now," she asked him.

"All right," he promptly agreed. "Would ... would you like to come back to the resort, with the rest of us?"

She shook her head. "I think ... I need to spend a little more time in private. Okay?"

He nodded. "All right. I hope that you'll join us for dinner, in a bit. Thank you again, Akira-san." And with a deep bow, he backed away and turned to go.

She opened her mouth to say it. But it still wasn't coming out. She turned around again, looking out over the edge, staring at the waves she knew to be as false as her stoicism, and, at last, began to weep.

* * *

Sixty-three minutes and eighteen seconds after they had disappeared in a faint haze from the basement of Evangeline's cabin, the sports girls (now sports women, in some cases) reappeared there. Well, some of them did.

"- can't believe this," Yuna was saying as she rematerialized. "Why's she want to keep Makie there for another day?"

"I think the answer to that is sort of obviouh," Akira replied, being cut off at the end by Ako grabbing her in a tight hug. "Ako?" she asked.

"I'm sorry," Ako said.

"Oh," Akira said in response. "You knew?"

"I figured it out. It's sort of funny, in a not-very-funny way," she added quickly. "Makie thinks it's you, and yet it's her, and ... oh, Akira, I am so sorry. I wish everything was different."

Akira at last folded her arms around Ako's much smaller form. "That's too much to wish for," she said sadly. "Much too much."

"... why am I the only one who isn't getting hugged at all lately?" Yuna asked, watching all this uncomfortably.

Ako made an irritated noise as she pressed the side of her face against Akira's breast. "Go hug your boyfriend you didn't tell us about."

"You've got a boyfriend?" Akira asked, blinking but otherwise looking completely unsurprised. "I'm shocked."

Yuna growled and started stomping towards the staircase. "Yeah, yeah."

"When did that happen?" Akira asked, as she and Ako stepped apart and began following Yuna.

Yuna didn't look back as she replied. "During the big victory party, okay?"

"Huh?" Ako said as they climbed the stairs. "I didn't see you with any guys, then. After your dad showed up, it seemed like you were spending the whole time with him, bending his ear about not telling you about the magic and -"

"Well, anyway!" Yuna said rather loudly. "I'm going home, why don't you two go console yourselves by eating too much ice cream or something? Or get a haircut! Or something. I'm going home now, see you tomorrow, byeeeee!" And with that she departed in a hurry.

By the time that Ako and Akira reached the door leading out of the cabin, Yuna was already a dust cloud in the distance.

"She was certainly in a hurry," Akira said. "I wonder -" Then her jaw dropped.

"What?" asked Ako, startled.

"Ako ... you don't think ..." Akira asked.

Ako blinked ... then abruptly a few pieces fell into place in her mind. "... Yuna ... and ... her boyfriend ... at the party ..."

"... where she was mostly with ... her father ..." Akira said slowly.

"Naaaaaah," they chorused after a moment.

There then ensued a silence that went on for far too long.

**To Be Continued.**


	12. Yuna, Akashi-sensei/Yuna

_Now_

Once she was relatively sure that Ako and Akira were not going to be able to follow her, Yuna slowed down from a headlong dash to a steady, easy walk, forcing herself to breathe easily. Calming herself down, she told herself that her sweet, innocent friends could not possibly have developed any suspicions about what she was doing from her actions and statements. She nodded firmly, then shook her head. "Wow," she said aloud, as she walked steadily and easily down the path leading to the teachers' area. "I really suck at lying, even when it's to myself. Gonna have to practice that."

Of course, it didn't help matters that Ako, at least, was not innocent anymore. Makie, of course, had told her everything that had happened, as though expecting that doing so would somehow prove that they always told each other everything, which in turn proved that Yuna did not have a boyfriend and had just been making the whole thing up - and so should join her for round two. (Or three, or four, or whatever number Makie was up to by this point.) Of course it hadn't worked.

Yet.

By now, her steady, easy pace, not to be confused with a jog, not at all, had brought her to the building she needed to visit. Steeling herself, she trotted up the stairs and headed over to the door, fishing the key out of her blazer pocket. "It's me," she announced as it opened.

"How shocking, I was thinking it must be one of the other people who have a key to my apartment," came the voice from the study just past the apartment foyer.

"Funny," she replied as she shut the door behind her, dropped her bookbag on the table beside the coatrack, and slipped off her shoes. Then, with one more deep breath, she went into the study.

"How was your day?" her father asked, without looking up from the desk where he was busily studying something.

"... longer than you'd expect," she answered honestly.

"Eh?" he asked, now looking up and turning completely around when he saw the pensive look on her face. "What?" he asked.

"How would you feel if I started dating someone my own age?" she asked.

He blinked. "Well ... I think I already explained that I'd be all right with that. In fact, I'd approve whole-heartedly if you -"

"Let me clarify," she interrupted, holding up a hand. "How would you feel if I started dating someone my own age ...  _now_?"

"... I'm not seeing the differential difference between that and what you asked in the first place," he admitted.

Yuna growled. "Come on, dad, you're a college professor and a wizard."

"Mage," he corrected. "That doesn't mean ... wait, when you say, 'now', you don't mean, 'started dating now', but rather 'someone who is now [your] own age'?" He made square parenthesis marks with his hands. Yes, really.

"Yeah."

"...  _Negi-kun_?" he asked.

"Could ya try not to sound so astounded at the idea that I might be able to swing that?" she asked, annoyed.

"I'm sorry, I just had no idea that you were even interested in him, like that. And, and aren't some of your friends already interested in him?"

"Yeah, um. I'm actually just considering throwing my hat in the ring," she explained.

"Oh. Well. I suppose that you could do worse. So could he, actually. And, anyway, as I was already saying, I'd approve of you being involved with someone your own age, instead of -"

"Yeah, that's the thing," Yuna interrupted again. "How would you feel ... if I started dating someone my own age, now ... while I was also still having sex with you behind that person's back only not so much behind their back as in front of it?" she concluded in something of a rush.

"... huh?" he said.

* * *

_Then_

_Not my party but I'll mope if I want to, mope if I want to, mope if I want tooooo,_  Yuna thought musically. (Her liking for early 60s American pop was one of her many secrets.)  _You would mope too if it happened to youuuuuuu._

It had started fine enough, with her salivating over the spread that Terribly Misunderstood Governor Goedel - as she now thought of him, since no one who provided her with such food could really be 'Evil' - had set out for them, taking part in the toast that Negi-kun had begun, smirking a bit at Ako being shy while Makie and Iinchou were chattering away with the kid, and having a pretty good time. But eventually, it had happened that Yuna was left alone with her thoughts.

This was something that her friends ought to know was a bad idea, since her dumbest decisions invariably happened when she was alone without someone to act as a sounding board. Yet here she was, sitting in a corner, watching everyone else have fun and, yes, moping. For the thoughts with which she'd been left alone mostly centered on two interrelated subjects, neither of which were all that cheerful.

First and foremost was her gradual realization that she hadn't really done as well as she could during the fight that they were all celebrating. Oh, what she'd done had been awesome and beyond awesome, even if she did think so herself, but she could easily see ways that it could have been even more awesome. Ways that would have, ideally, not ended up with her as a statue for even a few seconds, let alone the better part of an hour. Ways where she'd be able to look at Setsuna or Mana or - and this was the part that  _really_  bothered her - Chisame, who'd all been in it right up until the end, and say, 'Hey, I am also just that awesome," instead of what she did have to say, which was 'I am awesome, just not quite as awesome as my moody seiza-sitting buddy who doesn't even want to be here.'

These thoughts were of course interrelated with the thoughts she'd started having once Konoka's father and, holy crap, her grandfather the headmaster had made their appearance at the party to congratulate Negi and have a few words with Konoka and Setsuna as well. The sight of the old man and the glimpses she'd had of him kicking ass reminded her of just how much was going on back in the real world that she hadn't known about. (And if she had known about it, maybe she would have been in the 'supremely awesome' tier.) All of which also made her realize how much she missed her dad, even if he was primary offender in the charge of keeping Yuna ignorant and thus denying the opportunity for her to be supremely awesome.

She supposed that was a bit of a petty and self-centered attitude.

On the other hand, so what?

So, anyway, she sat and she moped, until she heard Makie saying, "Psst! Yuna!"

Roused from her moping, she lifted her head to look in Makie's direction and ask what, only for what she saw looking in that direction to render the question more or less superfluous. (Yuna's liking for the word 'superfluous' was another of her many secrets.) There, chatting with Negi and Takahata-sensei, who'd shown up with the old man and Konoka's dad, were a bunch of other teachers from Mahora. Touko-sensei was there, Katagiri-sensei was there, Gandolfini-sensei was there, and oh yeah, last but not least in Yuna's opinion, one Akashi Wataru was there.

And not even bothering to try and make himself inconspicuous, either, the jerk.

So Yuna got up, nodded graciously to Makie for the heads-up, and stomped across the floor to stand behind him. And there she stood for a few moments, watching him interacting with his colleagues, saying nothing, waiting for him to notice the eyes boring a hole in his back.

 _Dammit, Dad, why are you so freakin' oblivious?_  she silently asked at the end of those few moments, and then said, "Ker-hem!"

"Oh, hello, Yuna, how are you enjoying the party?" he asked without a glance at her.

"Growl," she answered. (Well, her actual comment wasn't the onomatopoeia, but rather a growl.)

He had the simple decency to flinch as he finally turned to look at her. "I got some 'splainin' to do, don't I?" he asked.

"Yeah, dad. You got some 'splain' to do," she confirmed, nodding vigorously.

* * *

_Now_

"Oh wow oh wow oh wowowowow!" Makie shrieked as her heels shook in the air over Evangeline's shoulders as the little vampire feasted on something that definitely wasn't blood between her legs.

"So let me get this straight," Chisame asked, hand tightly wrapped around Negi's member and stroking slowly but forcefully as the two of them sat together at the other end of the room and watched Makie getting it from Evangeline. " _That_  ... is your true love."

Negi flinched, most likely at her tone since it wasn't as though she could realistically injure him by jerking him like this. "I don't really like the way you're saying it, but ... well, yes. When Misa asked me whether I liked someone the most, I immediately thought of Makie and -"

"And yet," Chisame interrupted, pausing in her own interjection to nip at his nipple, "she doesn't believe it."

"Well, it's not so much that she doesn't believe it as she didn't ... give me the opportunity to tell her, because she thinks that I actually have those sorts of feelings for Akira-san. I guess she can't believe that I care more about her than I do about someone she likes so - why did you just bite me again?"

"And yet," Chisame repeated, in something of a non sequitur, "despite the fact that she likes Okochi so much that she'd think you prefer her over herself, she had sex with you. And Izumi, and in the process she got you to have sex with Izumi, despite the fact that you never voluntarily do such things."

"That was sarcasm, right?"

"Noooooo."

"... now,  _that_  was definitely sarcasm."

"Only you, you know that? Only you," Chisame growled.

"Only me what?"

"Only you would get a crush on a promiscuous chick who goes both ways and is oblivious enough to think you love someone else so that she  _wants_  you to be a frickin' harem king or whatever they call it," Chisame concluded. "I'm pretty sure that not even in manga do these things normally happen."

"Life is stranger than fiction?" Negi offered helplessly, then tried to get serious once more. "And hey, don't call her promiscuous, she -"

"AAAAAAH!" Makie shrieked. "And then, and then, I wanna do it with Asuna-chan, and Yue-chan, and Kaede-chan, and Ku-chan! Baka Sex Rangers forevAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"

"Sorry, were you saying something?" Chisame asked dryly.

Negi just sighed.

"I'm just surprised that Akashi didn't get dragged into this, too," the girl sighed as she continued to stroke him.

"She's got a boyfriend, now," Negi explained. "She mentioned it in passing. A couple of times, actually. And I guess she wanted to, well -"

"Fidelity? What a concept."

"Oh, don't be like that."

"Yeah, Hasegawa Chisame, as one of the beneficiaries of the boya's complete inability to be faithful, you really shouldn't knock it," Evangeline snarked as she ambled across the bedroom towards them, having left Makie in a post-orgasmic stupor on the bed. "Anyway, it's easier for Akashi Yuna to be faithful to her swain than you'd think, given the givens."

"So you know who it is?" Chisame asked, deciding to focus on the part of the situation that didn't immediately concern her.

"Hah!" Evangeline laughed. "I know everything I care to know!"

"Then how come you didn't know about Father being alive until I told you, or Asuna being the Princess of Twilight until Colonel-san told you, or ohhhh I don't think that's supposed to bend that way," Negi concluded.

Evangeline pushed down with her foot just a little more. "As I was saying, I know everything I care to know, though I don't always know what I ought to care to know," she continued, just a little less haughtily. "But I've known about Akashi's situation since it started."

"Well, I'm sure that whoever it is, Yuna-san cares about him a lot and -"

"It's her father."

"- and and and and and and and and and -" Negi repeated over and over again.

* * *

_Then_

"I'm glad you've calmed down a bit," he said, applying the bandage to the rather large bump on his head.

"What the flaming moonbeams gives you the asinine notion that I've done something as utterly out of character as calming down?" Yuna snarled as she sat on the edge of the bed, glaring up at him through the suite's bathroom door.

"Well, you agreed to come in here so we could avoid airing our family's dirty laundry in public," her father mused, stepping out through the door and turning the lights out. "I think that's progress. I think it shows that you've calmed down."

" _I_  think  _you lied to me_  and I think I'm pissed off!"

"... well, actually, there's no real uncertainty there - I  _did_  lie to you and you are certainly upset - so it's not really a case where you can say that you think these things are true, but rather -"

" _Why_  did you lie to me?" she interrupted.

"Could you be specific about which particular lie you mean?" he replied.

"You're cruising for it, Dad!" Yuna snapped, shaking her fist. "Seriously -" She took a deep breath. "Why didn't you tell me the truth about mom?"

He sighed. "Aside from the fact that you were five years old at the time?"

"Forget at the time, you've had ten freakin' years to figure out how to tell me the whole story and -"

"- and I don't know the whole story," he cut in. "I wasn't told the full details of her mission. That is what being involved in this world means, Yuna, very often you're only told what someone else thinks you need to know, and you're not made privy to their reasons for deciding why they think that. And yes, the parallels between that situation and what I did to you are pretty obvious," he added quickly as she began to open her mouth.

Yuna facepalmed. "You know what? You know what the screwiest thing about all of this is?"

"That we're having this discussion on Mars?"

"... close but no cigar! The screwy thing is, I'm not actually mad about you hiding stuff from me. You're the parent, I'm the kid, you gotta make these decisions. I get that. I really do. You know why I'm so mad? Do you know why I'm so utterly utterly mad right now?"

"Clearly I don't."

"Yes, because you suck at keeping these things secret! You are  _terrible_  at making these decisions! If you never wanted me to know about magic, why the hockey sticks did you leave me in the class being taught by Negi-kun?"

"W-well, you were settled there and I didn't want to pull you out of -"

"Uh-huh. And why'd you give me permission to go to England?"

"I, I figured even if you went to London in pursuit of Negi-kun that you wouldn't find him before he went to the magical world and -"

"You bet against Iinchou's obsessive tendencies and Sakurako-san's luck?"

"I don't know either of them that well!" he protested feebly.

"I've told you about them, Dad, I've known these girls since kindergarten and I've told you all about them, you don't get to make that excuse!"

"I thought you were kidding!"

"Because I'm such a kidder!"

"... yes, actually!"

"So you just didn't take me seriously. Look how well that turned out!"

* * *

_Now_

"So let me get this straight. Negi-kun is having sex with the girls in his class," Akashi said as he sat on the edge of his bed and watched Yuna at work in his apartment's kitchenette through the door.

"Well, not really. It's not really his class anymore, is it? He hasn't been back to teach since all that went down," Yuna replied.

"Who taught you to be such a sophist?" he asked after a moment.

Yuna paused, and looked rather pointedly at him.

"Right, sorry, silly question. Ahem. Negi-kun is having sex with the girls in  _your_  class," Akashi revised.

"Much more like it," she said approvingly. "Except not all of them, yet."

"And you are among that 'yet'," her father continued. "But you intend to change that status and at the same time make him aware of your other sexual adventures. It's at this point that my understanding of the logic of your position fails me, I must admit," he, well, admitted.

"Okay, this needs to cool down for a while," Yuna mused out loud, before walking back into the bedroom while brushing her hands on the apron she was wearing - over her clothes, it should be noted in passing. "Right. Basically, I don't want to be left out, and from what Makie was telling me about Negi-kun, he's really good at it. But I do have higher aspirations to all this," she added quickly as she watched his face turn rather red. She honestly thought it was rather cute the way he could be over-protective after having violated common decency the way that he had.

"Like what?"

"Let me give you a hypothetical. What if someone found out about us?"

"Well," he said, with a patience he didn't really feel. "At a minimum, I suspect that I'd lose my job and probably go to jail."

"And I don't want either thing to happen," Yuna continued triumphantly. "Since we've resolved that you suck at keeping secrets, and Negi-kun is kind of good at it -"

"We have?" Akashi-sensei interrupted.

"Did you know about what he was up to before I told you? And before you answer, did you know that he'd made however many of those pactio things he'd made before the School Festival?" she added quickly.

He decided to close his mouth, but nonetheless thought that it was a grave injustice that ten years of keeping secrets should not count for anything on some rather spurious grounds.

"Anyway," Yuna continued, since she had a hunch what he was thinking and didn't want him to dwell on it. "It seems like it would be a good idea for two people who have these kinds of secrets to work together in order to keep them. A common interest, you might say. And, as I've already mentioned, I'm wanting to get in on Negi-kun's action, and since he was nice enough to tell me all his secrets, it would be just plain wrong for me not to tell him mine when I do. Any questions?"

"... where do I start?" he wondered.

She glanced back into the kitchen. "Well, however you want to start, you might want to get them finished, because this hot fudge is about ready, assuming you want some Yuna a la mode."

* * *

_Then_

"Were you ever going to tell me?" Yuna asked abruptly, breaking the long silence that had fallen between the two of them.

"I don't know."

"Oh, come on, you can do better than that,"

"No, I really can't do better than that," her father replied sharply. "There are too many variables. As you grew up, and it became clear to me that you didn't have a ... a talent in the area -"

"I can light fires," she interrupted.

"Over here or over there?" he asked.

"... okay, I get your point."

"Anyway, when it became clear to me that you were like your mother rather than like me, that you weren't ever going to discover it on your own the way that I had, I decided that there was no point in exposing all of this to you. I hoped that you'd be able to lead a normal life."

"And again, look how well that turned out."

"And that's what I meant by there were too many variables," he retorted. "I always knew that there was a chance that you were going to stumble onto something on your own, and I knew that there was nothing I could do to influence that chance one way or another." He reached up, took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. "I almost told you after the festival," he added.

"Eh?"

"Watching that footage of you with those guns ... looking so much like your mother ... laughing and fearless and so  _utterly_  alive ..."

She realized, then, that he was crying. Manly tears, of course, bereft of sobs or choking gasps, but clearly expressing pain and grief and fear nonetheless. All at once, every element of spite that had been filling her heart dissipated like dew beneath the sun, and she rose up from the bed and, three steps later, wrapped her arms around his chest to hug him hard.

"I didn't tell you because I was scared of losing you, like I lost her," he said to the top of her head. "And then I almost lost you anyway."

"You didn't," she said to his chest.

"Yes, and I'm so glad you're -"

"No," she said, pulling back and looking up. "You didn't lose mom, okay? Someone took her from us. Whether it was the assholes we fought today or some other bunch of jerks, that's not the point. It wasn't anything you did. I'm gonna get whoever did it if it takes my whole life, and nobody is ever going to go through what we did if I can help it. So it wasn't anything you did. Okay."

He gazed down at her, tears still flowing from his eyes. When he spoke, it was to say something he knew that he might regret saying, but had to say regardless. "You are so very, very like her," her father said.

For a second they stood there, gazing at each other's faces. And then, just as she'd once mused about doing, she gave her father a long, wet, deep kiss.

* * *

_Now_

Chisame, standing on the platform, glared at the fading specks of light which marked where the just-now-closed portal had been. "Well," she said, voice almost as warm as she herself was, given that all she wore was a chemise and a pair of socks. "Aren't  _we_  decisive all of a sudden."

"He has not changed," Chachamaru dissented as she stood beside her. "As always, when he perceives a potential hazard to one of his students, he acts somewhat precipitously. If anything, I believe he has shown greater discretion in this episode than previously, having taken most of a subjective hour to clean and dress himself before charging out.

"Whatever," Chisame grumbled, turning on her heel and starting to march back towards the resort. "I suppose you knew all about Akashi and her ... thing," she concluded, unable to find a better word for it.

"In fact, I believe you have known longer than I," Chachamaru replied as she followed along behind her.

Chisame grunted disbelief. "Eva- _sama_  didn't share it with you in pillow talk?" Her tone made a mockery of the honorific.

"Master does not confide in me very often," Chachamaru admitted. There was the slightest of hesitations before the gynoid continued. "Nor does she engage in pillow talk on those occasions when I share her bed."

"Too busy, right?" Chisame sneered without looking back.

"Too tired. Chisame-san, to correct your misapprehension, when she desires my presence in her bed, it is because she wishes to be held, rather than to hold. She does not engage in any sexual activities with me." Another pause, slightly longer. "I believe she views me as a maternal surrogate at such times."

"Gross," gagged the glassed girl. "How you can stand that kind of thing, I'll never underst-"

"I personally have hopes that you  _will_  one day understand how someone, particularly me, can know another, with all their flaws, and love them very much anyway," Chachamaru interrupted.

Chisame didn't answer, and she very definitely didn't look back this time either.

* * *

 _Calm,_  thought Negi as he went up the stairs rapidly.  _Be calm. You walk master's path, so emulate master. And be calm._  He took a deep breath as he reached the door in question, and another one before he raised his hand to knock.  _Be calm._

The knock sent the door flying off its hinges.

"Oh dear," he said, loudly but calmly. "I seem to have accidentally done damage to this door. My humblest apologies. Might I enter to discuss reparations?"

A moment or so after he concluded speaking, he saw Yuna's head and shoulders - with what was below them covered by a sheet - leaning into sight from further down the hall. "Negi-kun?" she said amazedly.

"Hello, Yuna-san," he said, loudly but perhaps not quite really all that calmly. "Might your father possibly be in at the moment?"

* * *

_Then_

Their lips were pressed together as other parts of their bodies ground together, while they twisted together on the sheets. Initially, she was astride him, her face clenched in pain as - somewhat to her surprise - he broke her hymen. Only a few moments later, they rolled over so that she was on her back, and he was pumping down into her, her legs up and wrapped around his hips. At last he shuddered in release, and she gasped at the feeling of warmth and wetness spreading up into her.

They separated, then, both shifting onto their backs, breathing heavily but otherwise silent.

"What have I done?" he asked, staring up at the ceiling.

"... um ... I'm assuming that you don't want the literal answer to that, but I'm no good at figurative ones," Yuna replied, likewise staring up at the ceiling.

"... I can't believe that I ..." Her father trailed off, as if the full magnitude of what had just happened penetrated.

 _Heh, penetrated,_  thought Yuna.  _That's clever! Okay, not_ clever _, really, but ... eh, better say something before I start giggling and giving him the wrong idea._  "It was mutual, you know," she said aloud.

"I don't get to use that excuse," he said, sounding almost angry. "I'm the parent, you're the -"

"Then how come I'm the one who looks after you?" she interrupted quietly.

He didn't have an answer to that, apparently, for he fell silent at once.

"Face it, dad," Yuna continued. "We were never a normal father and daughter. Never."

"But this is wrong."

"Fine, it's wrong. So what?" She rolled over, reached down and grabbed his member with her hand. "I don't care that it's wrong. I don't. And this seems to be agreeing with me," she added, starting to stroke.

"Yuna -"

"I don't care," she repeated. "If it's wrong, then I want to be wrong. This is what I've wanted since I was in kindergarten, even if I didn't know what it really was. The knowing of it does not change the wanting of it." She paused, reflected. "Damn, that's kind of profound," she added, somewhat self-impressed.

"But -"

"Later for that," she said, bending down, lips and tongue teasing the head of his member. "Right now, it goes in this hole." And she suited the action to her words.

"Oh, damn," her father gasped as she sucked him. "Damn, damn, damn ..."

 _Yeah, probably,_  she thought.  _ _So what?__

* * *

_Now_

Yuna was starting to feel a bit chilly as she sat, wearing nothing but the sheet, on the small couch in the study beside her father, who'd had enough time to get on a pair of pyjama bottoms. (She felt that was a bit unfair.) Of course, since the chill in he room from Negi's frown as he paced back and forth across the study's floor - which wasn't much of a pace, to be honest, but needs must and all that - she supposed it wouldn't really have mattered what she was wearing. Except that if she'd been fully dressed, he'd have had no proof, and no excuse to be outraged.

"I am outraged," Negi helpfully announced. "I can't believe that a Respected Member of the Faculty of this Noble Institution would stoop so low as this!" (Yes, the capitalization was audible.) "Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you no sense of decency? What sort of an example are you setting for the younger members of the faculty?"

"Like yourself?" Akashi-sensei asked mildly.

"Indeed!" Negi retorted.

There was a long silence then.

"Yeah, I told him all about it," Yuna said, ending the conversational lacuna. "Incidentally, Negi-kun, have you been spending a lot of time with Takane-san? You rant kinda like she does."

As the only sound Negi's somewhat constricted throat was capable of making at the moment was a high-pitched hissing sound, he found it rather difficult to correct Yuna's misapprehension.

"Yes, she did tell me," Akashi-sensei confirmed in that same calm, mild tone. "Does he really?" he affected to ask Yuna. "I can't say myself, having never been on the receiving end of one of Ms. Goodman's rants. Perhaps I'll have the opportunity to observe one in the near future, however." He proceeded to give Negi a level stare.

"Hey," Yuna interjected, realizing where this was going and not liking it very much. "Hey, both of you, calm down. This is working out pretty much like I hoped, actually! Now you, dad, can't rat on Negi-kun because of what he knows about you, and you, Negi-kun, can't rat on dad because of what  _he_  knows about  _you_! It's a perfectly balanced situation! Isn't that just ginchy?" she cheered.

"... 'ginchy'?" Negi and Akashi asked in disturbing synchrony.

"Who had me watching all those old TV shows with him?" Yuna asked a bit angrily, plunking a finger against her father's nose. "Hm? Who was it?" She shook her head. "Anyway, I guess I am a little bewildered at how you found out, Negi-kun, since I didn't think anyone else knew and even if the girls suspected I thought they'd keep their mouths shut about -"

"It was Evangeline," Negi wearily explained, feeling the headache returning.

"Oh." Yuna blinked. "How'd she find out -"

* * *

_Then_

"This -" Eva gasped between hungry kisses as they stumbled down the hall. "- never - happened!"

"Anything you say, toots," Rakan agreed, sinking his fingers into her firm, glamorous flesh. "Where's the room?"

"It's right h-"

"Oh, daddy, daddy, daddy!" came the cry from the closed doorway.

"Next one down," Evangeline hissed. "Next one down."

"Ain't we gonna peek?" Rakan leered.

"No!"

* * *

_Now_

"Eh, I guess she probably peeked at some point," Yuna concluded. "Anyway," she continued, standing up and letting the sheet drop around her ankles, exposing her slightly chocolate-spattered form to Negi's incredulous eyes. "Like I was saying, things have pretty much worked out like I hoped, so I guess it's time to move on to phase two of my brilliant plan."

"Is there any chance at all that this phase  _doesn't_  involve having sex with me?" Negi asked wearily.

"Of course not!" Yuna replied, pressing up against him. "After what Makie told me, I can't wait to get a taste of Negi's negi!"

"I suppose it's not at ahhhhhhh what?" Negi asked, eyes gone wide. "My  _what_?"

"Your negi. You know, onion stalk. That's what Makie called it," she explained as she started to undo his belt buckle and pull down his pants. "I mean I'm pretty sure that she must have been exaggerating, but oh sweet silver bullets of the Looooone Ranger, she wasn't exaggerating at all!" Yuna exclaimed once she'd accomplished this step.

Akashi regarded it dispassionately. "Size isn't as important as some people seem to think."

"Sure, Dad, anything you say," Yuna replied without a backward glance as she began to rub the erection, grinning widely as she did so.

"It's not the size of the boat, it's the motion of the ocean," he continued, eyebrow twitching slightly.

"Mm-hm," she said, licking her lips before taking it into her mouth. Part-way, at least, since she couldn't fit more than half the shaft in there before she coughed and had to pull back. "I'm gonna need to practice this," she mused aloud.

"... you're not listening to me, are you?" Akashi-sensei asked.

"Yeah, yeah, definitely," she affirmed, before making another attempt to take the monster into her throat.

"They never listen to me, either," Negi said sadly. The two men exchanged a glance, and sighed in synchrony.

"Oh, don't be like that," Yuna said, pulling back to look up at him fondly. "Or you, either, dad!" she added after quickly replaying the last few minutes of conversation back in her own mind.

"I just wonder what happened to the person who wanted to be faithful to her boyfriend," Negi replied, sounding (even he realized) a bit defensive. "I mean, it was before I learned that you were engaging in something any sane person would regard as morally abhorrent, but I really respected you for taking that position despite the pressure you must have felt from your peers to join in on their activities. I think it's sad that you're not only abandoning those standards, but also oh come on how does this keep happening to me?" he asked as he realized that he was sitting on the couch with Yuna perched above him. Further adding to his disconcerted state was the sight of her father, standing some distance away, with his pyjama bottoms down around his ankles and his hands rubbing his member.

"We're the products of the Japanese school system, Negi-kun, we're really good at letting lectures just wash over us," she explained, then lowered herself onto his erection. "Mm, yeah! Uh, so good! Okay, dad, you know what to do, right?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder.

"Yes, I suppose so," he replied. "I've never done this in quite this fashion, but the process seems -" He broke off, shook his head, and crouched down to push his own erection against the rosebud of her anus.

"OH FUCK ME!" Yuna shrieked.

Taking this as the command that it may or may not have been, they proceeded to do so.

* * *

_Still Now, Just Elsewhere_

"Are you planning on getting dressed sometime today?" Chisame asked the naked girl sitting to her left at the big table. Despite the snarky tone, she was actually rather glad of the other girl's presence, as a distraction from Chachamaru's steady gaze and the challenge it represented.

"Ahhh! Nope," Makie replied cheerfully once she finished drinking her milk.

Some distractions, of course, she didn't need. "So, what, you're just going to walk around in the nude the whole day?"

"Why not?" Makie said, shrugging and consequently jiggling. "I'm not leaving the resort until Eva-chan kicks me out, and why should she do that?"

"Uh-huh," Chisame snarked. "And what happens if you run into one of the people she has as a guest? Rakan, or the creepy governor, or -"

"Well, then, I guess they'll see me naked," Makie said, in tones of one explaining the obvious.

"... and ... you're okay with that?" she asked, blinking.

Perhaps she'd not so much been blinking as closing her eyes for a lot longer than a blink. Perhaps that explained how Sasaki had gotten up from her chair to stand on the table. "Why shouldn't I be?" she asked grandly. "Why shouldn't all of us be? Let us be comfortable with our bodies! Let us be free of the encumbrance of our clothes! Here, in this wondrous place, warmed by the sun and cooled by the gentle ocean breeze -"

Chisame, sensing the onset of a multiple-page manifesto worthy of Ayn Rand on the virtues of nudism, desperately strove to return this narrative to sanity. She liked sanity, it tasted of bread. "A," she said loudly, "that's not the sun that's warming us, B, that's not the ocean and hence no ocean breeze, and C, biggest issue with your plan, eventually Eva will get tired of all this and kick us all out, and I don't think she's gonna give you time to get dressed when she does. So clothes might just possibly be a good idea."

Makie pouted as she stepped down from the table and sat down again. "You're such a killjoy, Chisame-chan."

"And don't call me -" Chisame started to say, only to be interrupted as a pair of hands extended past her shoulders and then wrapped around her in a hug.

"Yeah, but we love her for it, don't we?" said a familiar voice.

"Indeed, Asuna-san," Chachamaru agreed from across the table.

"Geh," opined Chisame.

"Asuna-chan!" Makie cheered, getting up.

"Maki-chan!" Asuna replied, holding her arms out as she let go of Chisame. Makie prompty bounced into her embrace, kissing her face.

"Have you heard?" Makie asked, after one more kiss. "Negi-kun confessed to Akira!"

"Eh?" Asuna asked. "It was her? Seriously? Wow! I never would have thought ... but you know, they really do sort of go together, don't they!"

"Don't they?" Makie echoed.

"Hm, but I wonder what's going to happen when he gets back to normal and they start dating," Asuna continued to muse as she started to walk away from the table, more or less carrying Makie with her without actually noticing the other girl's weight.

"Ooh, that might not happen. She's kind of heartbroken about all the other girls," Makie said. "It's so sad. But on the other hand, that means I could steal him. Or, you know, you, or Chisame-chan, or -"

"I don't really like him that way," Asuna said. "And Chisame's got other things on her mind, right?"

"Leave me out of this conversation," Chisame growled.

"Oh, that's right. Hey, Chachamaru-chan? What would Negi do in your situation?" Makie called back to her.

"Huh?" Chisame asked.

"I believe that he would wait and allow the more assertive person to whom he was attracted to begin romantic activities," Chachamaru opined.

"Well, then, do the opposite of that!"

Chachamaru blinked.

Chisame blinked.

Well, perhaps she was doing it again, and that was why Chachamaru had, in the blink of an eye, lunged across the table to start kissing Chisame quite soundly.

"I am such a genius!" Makie proclaimed as Asuna carried her out of the dining room.

"And cute, too," Asuna leered as her hands tightened around Makie's exposed buttocks and she bent down to press their lips together.

"What? Chachamaru!" is what Chisame wanted to say, but with the gynoid's mouth on her own as she was borne to the dining room floor, it came out muffled - as a ridiculously large number of rather important things she'd said lately had been. "Muh? Huhuhmuhuh!" is what was actually said.

"If you wish me to stop, then all you need do is stop me," Chachamaru said right back, without interrupting the kiss. Unfairly,  _her_  words, expressed through a backup voice synthesizer, were totally coherent. "You have the strength to do so, and I will not resist you if you choose to use it," she continued as she slid the hem of Chisame's chemise up over her hips and exposed her panty-less crotch. "Yours is the power to refuse, to deny, and I will respect that power even if it is used against me." At last, their lips broke apart, and Chachamaru gazed down at her. "Well?" she said, using her lips this time.

Chisame stared up at her, making several false starts at a response. In the end, she settled on a single word. "Why?"

"Why do I love you?" Chachamaru guessed at her meaning.

Chisame flinched, closed her eyes and nodded.

"Because you are Hasegawa Chisame," she answered, and reached down to begin rubbing at Chisame's vaginal area.

"Wha-UNGH! No! That's not an answer!"

"Yes, it  _is_  an answer," Chachamaru replied, not arresting her motions even slightly. Her fingers curved up into Chisame's vulva while her thumb stretched to begin rubbing the skin in the area of her clitoris. "It may not be an answer you like, but it is the answer to the question of why I love you. You are Hasegawa Chisame. If Hasegawa Chisame had never existed, then I would not either. There might have been a gynoid created by my parents, she might even have been given the designation I also possess. But she would not be me. You have changed me in so many ways, that I would be unrecognizable without your influence.

"And I choose to name that influence 'love'. I love you, and you, however horribly difficult you might find it to admit it, love me. Am I wrong in believing this?" she asked, her hand momentarily stilling.

"Crazy robo-chick," Chisame answered, blushing incandescently and looking away.

"I will accept that as an affirmative response," Chachamaru said with a tiny smile, and shifted the hem of the chemise up further, exposing the tips of Chisame's breasts, which she promptly swooped down to kiss while her fingers resumed motion below.

"Ahhhhhh," sighed Makie as she leaned back against the hallway wall just outside the dining room, while Asuna, down on her knees in front of her, demonstrated all the skills she'd gained in this area. "Friendship is so ... magical ..."

* * *

_Yep, Still Now_

"NYAAAAAAGGGH!" Yuna expostulated.

Negi was uncertain whether the sounds that Yuna was making indicated pleasure or pain, and he had the unsettling feeling that she herself was somewhat oblivious to the distinction at the moment. This was far more disturbing to him than Fei's enjoyment of pretend injury had been, and from the look on his face, Akashi-sensei didn't seem all that happy either. Of course, it was also a bit disconcerting to be able to look at the other man's face while this was happening, and Negi expected that it was the same for him.

They'd moved around a bit, so that Akashi-sensei was the one serving as the anchor for this positioning, with Yuna lying with her back to his chest while Negi pumped into her from above. It had been the logical thing to do - inasmuch as logic could be said to have any place here - since he had vastly more endurance and could engage in the required activity longer.

He suspected that she was oblivious to that, as well.

Of course, just as that thought coalesced in his mind, Yuna decided to reveal that she was not, in fact, completely oblivious. "Mmmmm, yeah, yeah, both of you inside of me, rubbing up insiiiiiide of me, so fucking good! Ahhh! But ... but you know what would be even better?" There was a faintly mischievous note to her voice.

"What?" Negi gasped in response.

"You just had to ask, didn't you?" grunted Akashi-sensei (whose first name he supposed he ought to have learned by now, under the circumstances.)

"Both of you, rubbing up insiiiiiide of me, and rubbing up against each other in the same fucking hole!" Yuna hissed her conclusion.

"No," Negi replied firmly.

"No," Akashi-sensei echoed maybe half a second later.

"Awwwwwwwwwwwww!" Yuna's moan of disenchantment surged into another kind of moan half-way through, leaving her in no fit state to talk about the matter. The tension of her orgasm form proceeded to set her father off, as well, and a load of his semen jetted up into her intestines almost immediately.

For his part, Negi kept plugging away for almost a full minute, before he felt the by-now-familiar sensation and quickly pulled out in order to ejaculate all over Yuna's stomach.

"Ooh, dirty," Yuna sighed, reaching down to smear her fingers with it, then bringing them up to her mouth. "Yum."

 _She and Kaede are going to have so much to talk about,_  Negi decided, then slumped forward on top of her, less because of any fatigue he might be feeling than in the faint hope that she wouldn't notice -

"Holy crap, you're still like a rock!" she exclaimed when she rubbed her hip against it, as her father - as gently as possible - shifted her so that he could slide out from under her.

 _Why do I bother with_ anything _, ever?_  Negi asked himself.

She was down on him, making another middle school try (since she wasn't in college, it  _couldn't_  be a college try) to take him down into her throat by the time Akashi-sensei disappeared into the suite's bedroom. She'd given up and was moving on to a more credible attempt as paizuri by the time he returned, dressed, and - with just a glance in her direction - headed for the door.

"Mm, dad?" she asked, between licks at the tip of Negi's 'negi'. "Where you goin'?"

"Out," he answered quietly. And then was gone.

* * *

Chisame, trembling with the release of yet another orgasm, found the strength to look up at where Chachamaru was crouched over her, maid's dress torn to shreds in the course of their coupling. "This, this isn't right," she stammered out. "It's ... it's all me, nothing for you, and -"

In total silence, Chachamaru held out a key to her.

"Oh," Chisame said, after a moment.

"Ahhhh!" Chachamaru said, after another moment.

* * *

Akashi Wataru found himself wandering a bit, as he made his way across campus towards his destination. It was sort of sad, the way that he'd come to take this beautiful place for granted over the years. The faces of the children, smiling and innocent, their whole lives ahead of them, filled his heart with the heady mixture of joy and sorrow that such sights ought to cause anyone who had a better knowledge of what those lives would actually entail.

Eventually, though, he came to the conclusion that he was needlessly delaying the inevitable, and headed to the Headmaster's office. After speaking with the old man's secretary, he only had to wait a very short time before he was told to step in.

"Ah, Wataru-kun!" Konoemon said, as he finished signing some paperwork and looked up at his guest. "Come in, come in. What brings you out here this evening?"

Akashi drew in a deep breath. "Sir," he said ... then found words failing him. "It's hard to know where to start," he concluded.

"Really?" Konoemon said, rubbing his beard. "I see. Well, then, shall I guess at the subject that brought you here?"

"Um, no, no - I'll -"

"No, let me guess. I almost never get to do this anymore, everyone's always so serious that they won't let me play this game anymore. I used to be very good at it, you know. I sometimes think they gave me this job to take away my opportunities to do so. Ahem." The old man took a deep breath. "You've come to talk to me about your daughter, Yuna-chan, haven't you?"

"Ah ... well, yes," Akashi admitted.

"Of course you have. See, I told you I was good at this! And honestly, Wataru-kun, I'm not blind."

"What?"

"Anyone with eyes could see what was happening."

"... they could?"

"Certainly! And needless to say, you have my permission to continue."

"I do?" Akashi said. Well, he really more or less squawked, really.

"Of course. Under the circumstances, you're the best person for the job. Well, no, I suppose Takamichi-kun might do better at it, but he has other responsibilities. I suppose it's going to be difficult, but I'm sure that you have the stamina that the task is going to take. I have complete confidence in your abilities in this area."

"Sir ... once again, I'm not sure what to say."

"No need to say anything," Konoemon assured him with a wave of his hand. "You're not the only one who's had a daughter who needed training, after all. My own child ... ah well, that's far too long a story to be told here. I'm sure that Yuna-chan will grow into a capable warrior and operative under your guidance."

"Ghack," said Akashi.

"Something the matter?"

He was opening his mouth to clarify that he wasn't talking about teaching Yuna but rather engaging in rampant sexual activities with her, when the door to the office abruptly opened and a man in a gardener's outfit entered at a run. "Konoemon-san!" he gasped. "It's terrible!"

"Higurashi-kun!" the old man replied, clearly startled. "What in the world is the matter?"

Higurashi Kosuke, former chief groundskeeper of Mahora and current unpaid volunteer pain in the ass, approached the headmaster's desk and set down the tree branch he was carrying on top of it.

"The world tree is dying," he said.

**To Be Continued**


	13. Fuka, Fumika

They gathered in Konoemon's office that evening, quietly surrounding his desk and staring down at the rotten branch, nearly as long as the desktop on which it rested. Well, most of the senior magical staff surrounded the desk. Evangeline - present as a courtesy and because no one present was equipped or inclined to stop her from being present if she'd a mind to be, which she did - had simply glanced at the branch on her arrival and then silently trotted over to the go board set up in the corner, waiting quietly and patiently.

"Then there's no possibility of a mistake?" Negi finally asked, the first to raise his voice in a while.

"No, Negi-kun," Konoemon said, sounding more weary than he'd ever imagined the old man could sound. "Higurashi has spent the last several days examining her in minute detail, trying to find some more mundane cause for this. If he and his army of gardeners can't find one in that amount of time, it isn't there to be found. The tree is dying ... and with it, all of our hopes, as well."

Thirteen gates to the World of Magic, all around the world. Mahora, Constantinople, Meridiana, Florida, New Jersey, Niagara Falls, Brazil, Ayer's Rock, a certain mountain in Eastern Europe, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Siberia, Sri Lanka, and one hidden in the depths of the Pacific Rim. Gates they were called, and truly, for they could allow for the passage of dozens or hundreds of travelers at once, where the smaller doors that occurred near to them might swing open for one or two at a time, at best, and were unstable and prone to malfunction. Gates they were called ... but they might also be called nails, holding down the fabric of the Magical World and tying it to the life-giving magic of Earth.

And the gate at Mahora, tied to the World Tree, had become the most important nail, which held the others in their place. If it failed, so would all the others. And if they all failed ...

"But why now?" Negi asked, well aware that his words might sound like he was whining. "The tree has stood for, for I don't even know how long -"

"As long as human beings have lived in this area," Nijuin-sensei said quietly, almost reverently.

"Then why is it dying now?" Negi asked.

"Come now, Negi-kun." Konoemon replied. To Negi's amazement, he sounded almost amused, as though he were chiding him for a simple lapse. "It should be obvious. What has changed, lately?"

"Uh," said the aged-up wizard who'd knocked boots with dozens of his students. The only positive aspect of it was that he got to see Takamichi looking off with an embarrassed face as well. "Could you be a little more specific?" he temporized, hoping that he was misunderstanding.

"Of course. What has changed in the magical landscape of this land, lately? What long-standing spells have been undone?"

The momentary relief of knowing that he had not actually been caught out died in its cradle as Negi realized what was actually under discussion. "You mean ... you're talking about Sa-Sayo-san's sleep?" he asked, appalled.

"Wait, Aisaka Sayo?" asked Kouko. "The ghost girl of my old class?"

"You were in class A when you went to school here?" Negi asked, welcoming any distraction.

"We didn't call it that, but yes. What does she have to do with -"

"When I cast the spell which saved her life, near seventy years ago, I sourced it with the most powerful magic I knew about," Konoemon said, welcoming any distraction from other issues. "That was the world tree. And when that spell finally came to an end, earlier this week, the end of the spell drew out still more."

"Then it's my fault," Negi whispered, though everyone present heard him.

"No," the old man said firmly. "It is mine. We can settle the question of responsibility at another time, perhaps," he added loudly as Negi began to protest. "For now, we must find a solution to the problem which confronts us."

"Of course," Negi said, nodding. "I'm sure that we can find one -"

"One has already been found," Konoemon said. "You have been working on it for quite some time, now, Negi-kun. The same solution to the problem of the magical world can be used to save it now.

"We will simply have to implement its first step much sooner than any of us would have wished."

"No," said Negi.

"Negi, I realize that you don't want to do it, and I don't blame you," said Takamichi. "But -"

"I'm not saying I don't want to do it," Negi quietly interjected. "I'm saying that I will not skip to the point where we have no choice but to use that last option until we have exhausted all others. Technically, I'm saying that we will not do that. I realize that it's probably very selfish of me to try and speak for everyone present, but I also think that the person for whom I am speaking would agree with me. She was the one who told me not to take the easy way out before, after all." He realized that he was starting to babble about things that weren't the business of anyone else, and restrained himself.

"Since the worst outcome clearly hasn't happened yet," he continued after a moment, "then I conclude that we have at least a little time before that happens. How long until the damage is irreparable?"

"From Higurashi's report ... I would say that we have less than a week," Konoemon said heavily.

"Five days," Negi replied quickly.

"Excuse me?"

"Give me five days to find a better solution, and if I can't find one by then, I'll agree that we're out of options. Except that I'll have found a better option and won't need to agree to anything. Five days. That should be more than enough."

"And what if that projection of the time we have left is too optimistic?" Touko asked, frowning.

"And what if that projection of the time we have left is too conservative?" Negi retorted. "Sir. My esteemed colleagues. Every second I spend arguing about this with you is a second I genuinely can't afford to spare. But I will, if necessary, beg." He began to lower himself to his knees.

"Stop," snapped the Headmaster. "There's no need to humble yourself."

"Oh let him go on, it's one of the things he does best," Evangeline said from the go board, not looking up as she spoke.

"I agree to your proposal, Negi-kun," Konoemon continued as though he hadn't just heard that. "But I would ask you to tell Asuna-kun what has happened before you start your efforts. She deserves to know the truth."

"Yes," Negi said. "She does." He bowed sharply, and then turned to quickly head out of the office.

"... amazing how he's exactly like his father," Kouko said.

In the same breath, Evangeline declared, "... amazing how he's nothing like his father."

"You are both right," Konoemon said into the silence that followed. "Nagi wouldn't have bothered to ask for permission. But that's the only real difference."

* * *

He put the fact that he didn't notice he was being followed until he was quite some distance from the administration building down to the fact that he was, after all, very distracted. Once he had noticed, though, it was fairly obvious who was doing it, and he stopped walking, turned and looked up at the trees lining the path. "I'm starting to understand why Chachamaru dislikes trees so much," he announced. "Would you two care to stop doing that?"

A moment later, the two petite pink-haired girls in ninja garb - thankfully, green and gray ninja garb, a step up from the ludicrous pink costumes they'd worn a few months before - dropped from the trees with nary a rustled leaf to be heard, landing as softly as a cherry petal before him.

The silence didn't last too long, though. "I told you he'd notice us. I  _told_  you," Fumika said to her sister. "But did you listen to me? Do you ever listen to me? Are you even listening to me now?"

"You're so skilled, Negi-kun!" Fuuka said admiringly.

"No, you're not listening to me. Why do I even bother?"

Ordinarily, Negi would have sympathized with Fumika, since he found himself wondering why he should even bother on a frequent basis. But now was not the time. "How long have you two been following me?" he asked, trying to sound stern.

"... how long do you think we've been following you?" Fuuka answered rather cheekily.

 _Assume worst-case scenario,_  he decided. "Since before I went to the meeting?" he asked, and was rewarded for his paranoia by the blanched expressions on the two crazy twins.

"I.  _Told_  You," Fumika hissed.

"Yes, and I'm not listening now, either," Fuuka replied.

"... that makes no logical -"

"You really are amazing, Negi-kun," Fuuka continued over her sister's tantrum. "Kaede-ne got wind of the meeting somehow, and asked us to keep an eye on you. We caught up with you as you were heading to the meeting, and we've been following you ever since. What's going to happen to Asuna?" she asked without changing her tone in the slightest.

"Nothing is going to happen to -" he started to say, then reigned himself in. The two of them knew something was wrong, and telling them that it wasn't would be both insulting and, honestly, useless. "All right," he said. "This is what's happening."

An interval elapsed.

"No!" Fumika cried, as Fuuka stared in shocked horror. "Negi-kun, you have to do something!"

"That's more or less what I'm planning," he told them.

"Let us help! I don't know what we can do, but we'll do anything we have to do in order to help!" Fuuka said, finding her voice at last.

As Negi began to open his mouth to thank them for their offer, another voice spoke from behind him. "There is absolutely nothing that the two of you can do, except to get in the way. You excel at that, but it is not helpful in the least."

Negi flinched, before turning around to look at Fate, who was standing a short distance down the pathway, positively radiating annoyance as he glared at the three of them.

"Fate," he started to say.

"Hello, Negi-kun. I find it somewhat vexing that I was not invited to the meeting these hellions spied upon," Fate said.

"Hey!" Fuuka and Fumika chorused.

He ignored them. "However, since I believe that I have gotten the gist of what was discussed from you just now, I'll overlook that insult. And, I suppose, it is true that it was a meeting of the senior staff of this institution, of which I cannot presently be numbered. So. Moving on, then. Am I correct in concluding that you have decided to abandon your plan?"

"No," Negi promptly replied. "If anything, I am attempting to keep following it. The plan didn't call for this to happen at this time, and it has always had room for modifications and improvements that develop while we're in the process of working out the details."

"I see," Fate said. "In other words, you never had any intention of allowing the Princess to make this sacrifice."

"No, that's not the case, it is simply a last resort that we don't need to use yet and which can be avoided -"

"Even though," he continued, voice raised over Negi's own, "she herself has accepted it as inevitable, and doesn't want you to spend time searching for alternate solutions. To waste time, as someone else might put it."

"... the situation has changed," Negi said, looking away.

"You're putting the entire plan in jeopardy on her behalf, Negi-kun. I cannot allow you to -"

"Hey, Fate, here's a thought. Why don't you just butt the hell out?" said Fuuka.

"Excuse me?"

"No," Fuuka snapped. "I won't excuse you. You say we're getting in the way? You're in the way. And you know, I bet that is what burns your skinny white ass the most, doesn't it, the fact that when we got in your way, we were one hell of a lot more effective at stopping you than you  _ever_  were at getting in ours. So now we're not in Negi-kun's way, we're pushing behind him and you're in our way, again. And you know what? I'm good with that. I'm glad you're in our way, because we are so totally going to kick the aforementioned skinny white ass, just like we did in the sports festival! So there!" she said, and opened her mouth to laugh.

And then, in less time than it would take to tell it, Fate was standing right in front of her, their eyes separated by no more than a couple of inches, the cold emptiness of Fate's glare boring into Fuuka's gaze. Laughter died. Speech was impossible. She couldn't even breathe. He hadn't laid a finger on her, not even lifted a hand, and yet all that she wanted to do was curl up into a ball and roll away as fast as she could.

"Fate!" came a voice as from a long way away.

Just like that, he had moved away from her, and was no longer staring into her. "Very well, then. If these are your allies of choice, far be it from me to criticize you for choosing them. May they give you all the help you could ask them for ... because you will get none from me.

"Three days," he added into the silence that followed.

"The Headmaster gave me five," Negi started to say.

"Good for him. Three days, then I restart Cosmo Entelechia. I told you that was my condition at the start of all this. Good luck, Negi-kun." And with that, he turned and walked away.

Fuuka's knees gave out at that point.

"Neechan!" Fumika nearly shrieked as she ran up to her sister, crumpled on the pavement in a way that Negi found distressingly reminiscent of the way that he'd left Sextum after their fight.

"I ... can't believe ... I'm still alive," Fuuka whispered, eyes still locked on Fate's back. "I really thought he was going to -"

"He wouldn't do that, Fuuka-san," Negi assured her, dropping down to the ground beside her. "Fate is maniacal about obeying the rules, and the rules of being a teacher here wouldn't let him hurt you. Frighten, yes, but not hurt. Can you stand?"

"... no," she said.

"Okay. Would you like me to carry you back to the dorm? I'm going there anyway, so it's not any trouble."

"If, if it's really no trouble," she said, looking away in a gesture he suspected was at least 40% unfeigned. Maybe as much as 45%. From the look on Fumika's face as her sister crawled up onto Negi's back and hung there as he stood up, he was fairly sure that he was the only one giving Fuuka that much credit, though.

That said, when Fumika finally spoke, it was to address the larger situation. "Then he's all bluff?" she asked, trotting alongside Negi as he walked steadily, as though Fuuka wasn't much of a burden at all.

"Not all, but since he didn't threaten Fuuka-san with an academic punishment, what he did just now was all that he was going to do." Not all bluff, not at all, even if what he'd said about restarting Cosmo Entelekhia  _was_. As things had stood when he'd said that, he might have been able to do so. But time had passed, and now there were too many forces which were aware of him and which would align against him, and the majority of his allies - the other Averrunci, Dynamis and the others - had been made permanently unavailable.

But if it had been a bluff, the warning beneath it was clear. Negi now had three days to come up with a solution before Fate went from passively refusing to help to actively opposing Negi's efforts.

Well. He supposed that he should consider that an additional incentive.

"Are you going to go tell Asuna now about what's happening?" Fuuka asked from his back.

"That's the plan," he answered with a nod. "She ought to be back at the dormitory by this point, though she may have stayed back at the resort to help Konoka."

"Huh?" the twins chorused.

"Oh, right, you two don't know about the resort, yet," he said, shaking his head in self-reproach. "I really ought to have something typed up, to get everyone on the same page about what's been going on." Though deciding how much of that should be omitted was a bit daunting.

"No, we know about that. Kaede-ne told us about that when she told us about everything else to get us to stop from hiding ourselves in her luggage," Fuuka clarified.

"What's Konoka-san doing there, though? She hasn't been going to class since the end of the Sports Festival, but nobody's said anything about what she might be doing, other than when Setsuna-san had constipation."

"... when Setsuna-san had ... no, I suspect that I wouldn't like the elaboration, so don't elaborate on that," Negi replied. "Anyway, Konoka has been training."

"You mean like you do?" Fuuka asked.

"... sort of, yes."

* * *

Her palm lanced out, driven by the force of arms that hadn't ceased motion since the bout began, with just a bit more explosive power added from the motion of hips as well. She was moving faster than she'd ever imagined that she could move, and it still wasn't enough - the palm slapped against the shaft of her opponent's spear - nor did her immediate follow-through of a shin kick come close to his legs.

None of that was surprising. Konoka knew perfectly well that even if she were to study for a hundred more years, she would still not be able to equal his skill. She could never beat him with the arts he'd taught her. But she could fight him. And she was.

One more upthrust punch, one more millimetricly narrow duck under the tip of his spear, and then she halted.

"Had enough?" her opponent asked, his own cessation of motion seeming at most a pause.

"No," she said. "Not ever. But, unfortunately, Li-roshi, my ghost touch spell is about to expire, and so is our contract."

The translucent old man reflected a moment, then let out a sigh. "So it is. Well. Your practice is still rough-hewn, you still lack appropriate delicacy, and you rely overmuch on magic to give your motions force. Given a bit more time, I might be able to make a worthy student of you. Alas."

"Thank you, roshi," Konoka said, practically floating on the waves of that supreme compliment.

He accepted her thanks with a nod. "And please pass on my thanks in turn to our host. Let her know that I consider the debt I owe her for teaching me what it was like to a hit a person twice to be paid in full." Fading out even as he spoke, he let his head fall back and laughed quite a bit before he went away entirely.

She bowed to the spot where he'd been standing, took a deep breath, and walked away to where her friends were waiting.

"So, you done?" Asuna asked.

"It's never done, but I've gotten all the training I'm going to get from this source," Konoka said. She turned to Fei. "I hope you'll be willing to spar with me to keep me in -"

"Forget it," said Fei.

"Sorry?"

"Not talking to you for a while," Fei said, sounding rather cross. "You get Eva-chan to summon ghost of Li Shuwen -  _Li Shuwen_ ,  **the**  Li Shuwen - and get him to teach you both baji quan  _and_  pigua quan for days and days down in here, and then you only invite me to watch your  _last_  training session? So I no can challenge him? No can even ask for autograph on underwear? No, not talking to you for a while." She sniffed and looked away.

"The path of the martial artist is indeed one of peril," Konoka mused sadly.

"And stop saying stuff like that, you schtick-stealer!"

* * *

"Well, did you have fun at least?" Asuna asked a little while later, as the two of them walked together along the path away from the resort. Though Fei had eventually accepted Konoka's heartfelt and certainly-not-at-all-tongue-in-cheek plea for forgiveness, she'd wanted to get in some training of her own and remained behind.

Konoka shrugged. "I'm not like you or Fei or even Setchan, Asuna. Training like that, being active, for me, it's ... not about fun." Her face went speculative. "I wonder if Mana-san finds it fun? I think ... well, anyway, I guess I understand all of you a lot better than I did, and that's good. And I don't have to be protected, but can help to protect everyone I care about, a bit more now. And that's really good. So ... it wasn't as much fun as healing someone is, but I didn't hate it."

Asuna stared at her for a moment, then grinned. "You're tsundere for training."

"What?" Konoka asked, blinking.

"Yes, you are. Totally. 'I don't hate it'? Sooooo tsundere."

"I am not!" she protested. "It's not like I - oh, hell."

"Tsundere. Chisame's going to be after you for stealing  _her_  schtick, next." Asuna began giggling.

Konoka took a mental picture of this moment, froze it in her memories forever. "I love you, you know that?" she said.

"Back at'cha," Asuna said, mimicking Konoka's faint accent.

"No, I really -"

"I know," Asuna said, smirk flowing to a gentle smile. "You don't have to convince me, okay? And you don't have to do stuff to make the next few months easier on me or nicer or whatever. Just ... always be yourself. That's all I need from you."

"Easy enough. Though I'm still worried about ...  _her_." That was said in almost a whisper, accompanied by a rapid visual check of the surrounding area.

"I know, I know, but I'm telling you, she's in jail. There's nothing to worry about."

* * *

The phone rang. Konoe Kouko, just outside the train station, pulled it from her jacket pocket and flicked it open. The number wasn't familiar, but she recognized the area code, and promptly took the call. Long distance from the magical world was not something to be ignored.

"Hello?" she said, in English.

"Kouko-san?" said a panicked voice she didn't quite recognize. "It's Goedel. Where's your husband? I've been trying to reach him for -"

"In Kyoto, dealing with some issues," she replied. "Out of the transmitter's reach, of course. What's the matter, Mr. Governor General?"

"We've been tricked. She's  _not_  in the prison. She never was, the warden is in someone's pay and -"

Kouko started to run.

* * *

She'd parted company with Asuna, who was heading back to the dorms. For her part, Konoka found herself wanting to stroll around a little more in the evening. It had been subjective months since she'd seen her hometown, after all, and she'd almost forgotten how beautiful it could be. So she walked aimlessly, enjoying its sights with a pleasant smile, pausing only for a moment to look up at the World Tree ... and frowning. Something looked off about it.

Well, she was a people doctor, and to an extent an animal doctor. Plants were outside the area of her expertise, for now. Maybe she could go ask someone in the gardening staff about the situation, get some advice on the subject. She had time, now. After all -

She heard someone calling her name, turned to look in that direction.

"You know, I wonder," said Tsukuyomi, who was standing behind her. "What will hurt you most? Killing your mother, in front of you, or killing you, right in front of your mother, so that the last thing your eyes perceive before the world goes dark forever is the sight of her horrified face?"

Konoka stared.

"I'm really very curious. I don't have these sorts of bonds, you see, so I couldn't possibly relate. You get them, though. So which do you think it would be?" The girl in the glasses tilted her head just slightly, as she regarded Konoka with the same sort of interest a born doctor in a middle school biology class might regard the frog she was about dissect.

"Hello, Tsukuyomi-han," Konoka said, quietly.

"Ah, not 'you'? I was really looking forward to hearing you shriek 'you'."

"I'm actually sort of glad to see you," Konoka continued, as though the mercenary hadn't said anything. "Mostly because it's a relief to know that I wasn't crazy. And because if you really were locked up, and I'd just been imagining having seen you before ... that would really have been such a waste, don't you think?"

"Interesting perspective," Tsukuyomi replied.

Konoka heard her name called one more time, desperate fear in the voice.

So she raised her own. "Mom, stay back!"

And the little twitch of Tsukuyomi's eyes in response told her all that she needed to know, told her that no, the swordswoman's attention was not on her at the moment, and that she had more than a prayer. And in that moment, Konoka lunged forward, left elbow slamming into her opponent's unguarded stomach, then left hand up against the glasses on the other girl's face, pulling them away, sending them tumbling through the air.

"Agh!" Tsukuyomi shrieked. "My glasses! I can't see anything without my glasses!"

Right knee strike to enemy's side -

Blocked. By a still sheathed sword, directed by steady hands and guided by eyes that were now clearly focused on Konoka.

"- is what you were probably expecting me to say," Tsukuyomi nearly hissed. "Stupid princess, did you really think I wouldn't get that little weakness corrected? Isn't magic wonderful?"

"So it is," Konoka agreed. "ADEAT!"

* * *

"And here we are," Negi declared as he opened the door to his dorm room, Fuuka still hanging on his back and Fumika trailing along behind with a dissatisfied look on her face. "And ... she's not back yet. Of course not. Do you feel strong enough to stand, Fuuka-san?"

"Welllll," Fuuka hemmed.

"Yes," Fumika interjected. "She does."

Fuuka promptly made a face at her sister, who proceeded to make one of her own right back at her. Apparently oblivious to this byplay, Negi proceeded to squat down so that Fuuka could slide off of him, and she reluctantly did so.

"Well, it can't be helped. I'll just have to wait for her and start working on other aspects of my plan until she comes back -" he began to say.

"Negi-kun, can I ask you something?" Fumika said then.

"You just did, but go ahead all the same," he told her.

"It's about what Fate said," she continued, very hesitantly. "He was saying that Asuna is ..." Fumika fell silent at the look of obvious pain that crossed Negi's face.

"He said that she's resigned to her fate," Negi confirmed. "I don't know that I'd put it like that, but ... yes, Asuna believes that it's her responsibility to enter stasis for the sake of the magical world, and asked me to stop looking for other solutions to the problem. But that was when we had months to go before she'd have to do it, not days. Under the circumstances, I'm sure that she'll ..." Now he fell silent.

"Negi-kun?" the twins chorused.

"I'm not actually sure about that at all," he admitted. "I think ... she's hypnotized by the hard choice. I think that it's such a hard decision that she's afraid of any alternatives, that they'd have hidden costs which made them even worse. And I think that she's so fixed on this solution that it's ... making her act in ways that she normally wouldn't."

"You mean the sex stuff?" Fuuka asked.

"Yes, the se-"

Long pause.

"Did Kaede tell you about that, too?" Negi asked, trying without success to stop blushing.

"No, we spied on Asakura-san and Sayo-chan while they were talking about it," Fumika explained, looking a bit embarrassed herself.

"You don't have to give away all our secrets, you know," Fuuka pointed out irritably.

"Oh, come on, neechan, look how upset he is. We can't make trouble for Kaede-ne by letting him think it's her fault. That wouldn't be right."

"Eh, I guess not," Fuuka agreed. "So ... can we have sex, then?" she asked Negi.

"Okay," he said, starting to unbutton his jacket.

The twins blinked in stupefaction as Negi began to get undressed. "You mean, you're just going to agree to that blunt proposal? Just like that?" Fuuka asked.

"Well, there was a time, not so long ago, when I would have tried to talk you out of the idea," said Negi as he unbuttoned his shirt starting with the cuffs. "But that has never worked, not even once, and I'm afraid that I don't think it will work this time, either. So really, there's nothing to do but go through with it, and try to do the best job that I can, even though my heart isn't really in it. I hope that you're all right with that."

"I don't really think that I am!" Fuuka said, very affronted. "I mean, holy smoke, sensei, I think we at least deserve to have to use all of our girlish charms to wear down your resistance and hmmm hmmm hmmm ... hmmm?" she concluded as she realized that Fumika's hands were over her mouth.

"Neechan," Fumika said into her ear, voice quiet and deadly. "You're my sister and I love you, but so help me, if you wreck this for me, I swear to Lucifer, you will need to spend our entire high school career sleeping with one eye open.  _Got it?_ " Fumika hissed.

"Mm-hm, mm-hm," Fuuka agreed, nodding rapidly.

"... is something the matter?" Negi asked, deciding (as he often did) to pretend that he hadn't seen or heard certain things which had happened right in front of him and which he could not possibly have missed.

"Nope,' the twins said in chorus, Fumika's hand coming down from Fuuka's mouth just in time to ensure that her section of the chorus wasn't a meaningless mumble.

"I thought not," he sighed and unbuckled his trousers so that they pooled around his ankles.

"Wow, sensei is going commandoooooooooo," said Fuuka before she went slightly cross-eyed.

He found that this part of the unvarying routine ('girls are stunned by size of male member') was actually a bit comforting, and was moved to explain. "Well, I was in something of a hurry when I left Yuna's father's apartment, and -"

"Oh wow, you're having sex with Yuna's father?" Fumika gasped.

"No, no, with Yuna," he clarified. "Though I think he's a nice enough fellow, and -"

"Oh, so he wasn't there?"

"... no, he was there," Negi admitted.

"And he knew you were having sex with his daughter?" Fuuka gasped.

"He ... couldn't really not know it."

"You mean ... he was  _there_ , there?" Fumika said, going pale.

"You couldn't really get  _more_  there."

Dead silence. The twins exchanged a look. "Ewwwwwww!" they chorused again, and deliberately stepped apart.

With sudden hope, he continued talking. "If that revolts you, I can't really blame you for not wanting to be involved. We don't have to -"

"No, no, we're okay, it's just a little bit sick and wrong, and it's important that you understand that we don't want to do that sort of thing, do we, neechan?" Fumika quickly replied.

"... uh ... yeah!" said Fuuka, maybe just a little bit slower than she should have.

Since he was honestly still a bit uncomfortable with what he'd discovered Yuna and her father doing, Negi naturally had no objection to the twins not doing that with each other. On the other hand, as they proceeded to drop down on their knees in front of them, he was also aware that their refusal was causing problems of its own. They shied away from  _any_  contact with each other as they stripped off their jumpsuits and the underwear beneath, and while that was easy enough, they kept avoiding it as they began to suck and lick at his erection and testicles, which made the entire process far more awkward than it had to be. And the occasional 'ack' noises that they made when they accidentally bumped were a little disconcerting, too.

"All right," he said at last. "Let's try something else. Something that will - ah, of course. I'm going to lie down, and, um ... okay, Fumika, would you stop doing that and come up here so that I can - oh, Fuuka, please keep right on, that's very nice, yes - and here we go."

With that, he plunged his face between Fumika's spread hips and began licking at her, to her great satisfaction, loudly expressed.

Perhaps a bit  _too_  loudly expressed, in fact. It wasn't long before Fuuka paused in her ministrations to complain. "This isn't fair! Why does only Fumika get to have fun like that?"

"Because you're a hooli-" Fumika began Standard Reply To Inequalities Of the Narutaki Siblings #1, but was cut off.

"I'm sorry, but I only have one mouth, Fuuka, so there's really nothing -"

"You could use magic!" Fuuka suggested, eyes dancing. "If you used some sort of spell to be in two places at once and -"

"No," Negi said firmly.

"Awww!"

"Would you mind if I switched around?" Negi wearily asked Fumika.

"Oh, fine," said Fumika, more than a bit out of sorts. She grew steadily more and more out of sorts over the next few minutes as she was compelled to listen to her dearly beloved older sister shrieking about how good Negi's tongue felt in her and on her. It was so annoying, having to listen to that nonsense, which was completely different from whatever restrained and sedate exclamations of ecstasy she herself had made a few minutes ago. Yet here she was, busily sucking Negi's admittedly tasty cock, and unless she wanted to abandon that and go elsewhere, she had no choice but to lie here and listen to to to to ...

 _Wow, we're really not all that smart, are we?_  Fumika realized abruptly, after an idea occurred to her just as abruptly. She pulled back, shook her head, then reached down between her legs to make sure she was ready.

"Ah, yes, lick me there! Eeeeyahh! Oh, Negi-kun, you bad bad boy, you -" Fuuka declared, eyes closed.

"Ahhhh!"

Fuuka's eyes shot open as the sounds of flesh slapping against flesh rang through the room. Her neck craned up, and a strangled gasp escaped her mouth as she saw Fumika bouncing up and down on Negi's hips. "What are you doing?!" she cried.

Fumika didn't even bother to look at her. "Well, neechan, when a daddy and a mommy love each other  _very much_  -" she started to explain as she worked her hips furiously.

"But you can't do that! Not until I do it! This isn't right! I'm the edgy mischievous one!" Fuuka complained.

"Done it! Done it before you did it! Don't care if it's right or not! The cute nervous one is scoring first! Heeheehee!" she said (not laughed.)

"Gyaah!" Fuuka howled. Not only was she being humiliated by this, it was clearly distracting Negi quite a bit, since he wasn't licking at her all that often anymore. And there she was, her little sister, showing her up, her itty-bitty-titties shaking as she humped up and down, nipples so hard and and and and ...

 _Wow, I can't believe I'm about to do this,_  she thought, and proceeded to do it anyway.

"Aaaaaaauuuhhhh?" Fumika's sigh of release turned into a confused grunt as she realized that she was being kissed rather firmly ... and not by Negi. "Uhhhh?!" she grunted again as she stared somewhat cross-eyed at her sister whose tongue was in her mouth and whose hands were on her tits.

 _So much for not wanting to do **that** ,_ Negi said, once again mourning the death of standards.

"Whuhhh?" Fumika mumbled loudly. Then she jerked her mouth back from Fuuka's mouth. "No, wait, no -"

"Oh, come now, dearly beloved little sister, you had to know this was going to end up this way," Fuuka cooed as her hands squeezed Fumika's breasts once more, then slid down her sides to wrap around her hips and start squeezing Fumika's buttocks. "It's not a real three-part unless all three parts work together, after all."

"That's not a real saying and stop it!"

"Mmmmnope!" Fuuka gloated, and kissed her again, exploiting Fumika's recoil to push her off of Negi's negi and onto the floor, where she crouched over Fumika's body. "Well, go on, Negi-kun, get back to fucking my cute little sister! Fuck her hard! Fuck her hard then come in her so I can suck your seed out of her and spit it in her mouth!"

"... that's a very detailed plan you have there," Negi said a bit dazedly.

"I've been watching a lot of porn recently!" Fuuka confessed sunnily.

"Get off!"

"I'm trying to get  _you_  off, silly!"

"Gyaaaah!" Fumika clarified as Negi, obedient to a girl's instructions as ever, began pounding into her. It occurred to him that he should probably cast a silencing spell to keep from bothering the neighbors ... but his heart just wasn't in it at the moment. Oh well. It couldn't be helped.

Once it became clear to her that no help was coming from Negi's direction, Fumika redirected her attention to her sister. "I hate you, neechan!" she cried as Fuuka rained kisses down her jawline.

"No, you don't," Fuuka cooed. "You love me. And even if it's wrong, you don't care if it's wrong or not. I know you don't ... because we are the same. We have always been the same, with only tiny superficial differences between us. We don't even know if I really am the older one, no matter what mommy and daddy might have said. We are the same, and so I love you, and you love me, and you can't do anything else.

"Isn't that fucking awful?" she asked, grinding her hips into Fumika's hips, their clitorises pressed against each other and wow clitorises is an ugly word for something so pretty.

"Fuck her!" Fuuka yelled over her shoulder at Negi. "Fuck her, then fuck me, fuck us both, fuck us like the fucking fuck fuckers we fucking are, get on with the fuckery, fucking Negi-kun!"

Ah, romance.

* * *

"Well well," Tsukuyomi said - with difficulty, since it's hard to talk with the arch of someone's foot on your throat. "Baji and pigua united, I see. Somewhere heroes must be sighing. Alas, I am a villain, and -"

With everything she had, Konoka kept Tsukuyomi pinned to the ground.

The hardest part had been keeping the mercenary's swords in their sheathes long enough for her to strike them out of her grip. If they'd come out, disarming her would have been a much harder and more dangerous affair. It had still been dangerous, since Konoka was well aware that Tsukuyomi had the same mystical connection with her weapons that Setsuna did and so could call them to her hands if they were out of them, and was not even a little bit aware of how far that connection could stretch. But she'd managed to get them far enough away that her mother had been able to snatch them up and take them further, definitely putting them out of Tsukuyomi's 'reach'.

She'd had to rely on her mother to do that. She'd taken advantage of the fact that her mother was in danger. It seemed likely that was contributing to the faint red haze that enshrouded her vision at the moment.

"So are you beat?" Konoka asked.

"It would seem so," Tsukuyomi replied with obvious indifference. "Clearly, I need to work on the unarmed aspects of my style, for next time."

The red haze got denser. "Next time?" Konoka hissed.

"Well, it's not like you're going to kill me. The pretty princess is never going to do that. You think life has value. That makes you so very very weughh." Her eyes bulged out as speech became not difficult, but impossible ... along with breath.

Crouched over her enemy, eyes livid as she held a hand over Tsukuyomi's mouth and nose, Konoka stared down at the woman she was going to kill. It was important to do this. She would not turn away from what she was doing. When the light in the eyes of the other girl - so young, really, for all her bravado and skill - went out forever, Konoka would see it, and acknowledge that this was the deed of her hands and -

"Konoka!"

The fact that the voice wasn't calling out 'oujosama' rendered it somewhat unrecognizable to her, and so she didn't react at once.

"Konoka, stop!"

Even when she did recognize it, she didn't look up. Didn't look in that direction. Didn't want to see the shame and horror that would surely be on that so-loved face. She'd have to eventually. But not now. Not while she was doing this.

And then strong, gentle arms wrapped around her midsection. "Kono-chan."

Not quite against her will, her hands on Tsukuyomi's face and her foot on the girl's throat eased back, and she heard, as from a distance, coughing and choking.

"She'll come back," she heard herself say. "She'll come back, and she'll try to hurt us, and she'll try to hurt our friends, the people we love, my mother, and  _she only has to win once_  -"

"- and we have to win each and every single time, you are not saying anything I have not said to myself before. But we are Ala Alba. We  _thrive_  on those kinds of challenges, Kono-chan. Every time they try to hurt us, we become stronger, wiser ... heaven help us, we become  _kinder_. I would never be able to love you as I do without her to make me realize just how much our bond means. So we're going to put her in a cell, for a while, and when she gets out and comes after us again, we will beat her again ... and the sad part is, that is the only kind of bond this sick, sad girl can ever have with anyone."

Breathing heavily, Konoka closed her eyes ... and completely by her will, pulled her hand away from Tsukuyomi's face.

"If you start making out on top of me, I'm going to puke," Tsukuyomi rasped.

Her foot was still in position to slam heel-first into the girl's jaw, and she decided that doing so was still consonant with the decision she'd just made.

* * *

Fuuka and Fumika were lying on the floor, gasping in near exhaustion, while Negi sat at the table nearby and tried to focus his thoughts on a plan to save Asuna. The distraction from that goal that the twins had presented had been considerable. He had, as Fuuka commanded, fucked Fumika until he came inside of her, then watched as Fuuka, as she'd said she would, sucked the sperm out of her sister and then pushed it into her mouth with her tongue. (He supposed that not spitting it, per se, was a non-differential difference to her plan.) And then she'd had him fuck her and forced Fumika to lick the ejaculate out of her once he was done, then had him do her again while she engaged in tribadism with her sister ... a lot of variety.

Negi supposed that someone who found that sort of thing interesting would have found it all very interesting.

"Admit it," Fuuka said between gasps. "You loved that."

"I only did it because you wanted to," Fumika said without looking at her.

"Tsundere," Fuuka cooed.

"Oh, shut up."

"Hey, Negi-kun," Fuuka said, apparently deciding to give her sister some space. She lifted her head to look at him. "How you doing with the plan?"

"I'm still considering ideas," he answered honestly.

"Well, if you want to bounce them off of us ..." Fuuka said, trying to sound ingratiating.

"Oh, leave him alone, neechan," Fumika said crossly. "All we can do is help him anyway we can when he comes up with something. We're not nearly clever enough to help him do so. And he doesn't have time to waste fooling around with that! It really sucks, Negi-kun! If only you had more time!"

And Negi sat up straight.

"Hey, maybe you're not clever enough, but I'm the one who tricked him into thinking there's a stroll through Death Valley, so I think maybe I could pull it -" Fuuka started to say.

"Say that again?" Negi demanded.

"... okay, there's not really a stroll through Death Valley, and all we do in strolling club is come up with crazy ideas like that, but -" Fuuka replied.

"No, no!" he said sharply. "Fumika? What did you just say?"

"... if only you had more time?" Fumika said, confused by his intensity.

"That's it! I need more time!" Negi shouted, grinning broadly.

Silence fell.

"... I think maybe we broke him, neechan," Fumika said hesitantly.

"Wow! We're awesome!" Fuuka exclaimed, grinning broadly.

**To Be Continued.**


	14. Chizuru

"That's it! I need more time!" Negi's voice declared.

Makie and Asuna exchanged a look as they stood together in the doorway. Makie shrugged, and they started walking together down the hallway to the living room.

"... I think maybe we broke him, neechan," Fumika's voice commented.

"Wow!" said Fuuka, just as they turned the corner and saw the three of them wearing little more than the faintly manic (in the case of Fuuka and, disturbingly, Negi) and mildly perturbed expressions (in the case of Fumika) on their faces. "We're awesome!"

"That's a good attitude to take, generally speaking, but I'm not sure if this specific instance is really something to be proud of," Asuna declared. "Somebody's been a busy little woodchuck, I see."

"Asuna!" Fuuka and Fumika chorused, then ran at her.

"That's my name, don't whurf?" she said as they hugged her tightly.

"You've got to tell me how to get greeted like that," Makie mused, plainly checking out the twins' well-formed bottoms.

"Asuna!" Negi gasped. "I've got good news!"

"Okay," she said, reasonably. "What's the good news? And why didn't you comment about my using woodchuck just now instead of beaver, because I had this whole routine about how beaver means something else planned out in my head, and I'm a little annoyed that I'm not gonna get to use it, now, so -"

"I know how I'm going to save you!" he told her.

Asuna's face went still. "Ah," she said quietly. "You told these two about ... okay, that, that explains it."

"Explains what?" Makie asked, eyebrows now quite high on her forehead.

"Look, Fuuka, Fumika, I know that you're probably sad about it, and that's okay," Asuna said. "But it's something that we can't really help, and before then, we're gonna have a lot of fun in the months before it happens, so -"

"Days!" the twins chorused in sorrow.

"- it's not sooooooooooooooo ..." Asuna eventually trailed off into stunned silence.

"Yes, that's the other thing," Negi said once she did so. "The world tree is dying, you see, so in order to save it and the magical world, we're going to have to put you in suspended animation in ... well, probably about five days, or so. But it's okay, I have a plan."

"What?!" Makie shrieked.

"Uh," Asuna replied cleverly.

"It's a good plan!" he assured her.

"I ... I think I need to sit down," Asuna said, sounding just a bit faint.

"Oh my gosh," Makie said, watching her friend stumble over to the couch without ever once dislodging Fuuka or Fumika from their embrace of her person. "Oh my gosh! That's why ... that's why this has all happened, isn't it?"

"Yes, Makie, that's why -" Negi began to confirm.

Makie leaped across the room as Asuna was settling down, and grabbed her hand in both of her own. "That's why you've been going around screwing everything in sight! Well, don't worry, Asuna, I'll help you to fill these days with as much hedonism as possible! We'll have sex with everything that moves! And things that don't move, but might be movable! I - I'll even let you bang my little brother before I do!"

Negi's mouth hung open with not even the slightest noise coming out.

"Your little brother?" Asuna asked weakly.

"Well, I'm having sex with Negi-kun in an aged up form, and Yuna's having sex with her papa, so if I have sex with Kagehii in an aged up form, it's almost the same thing, right?" Makie asked. "And you two are having sex with each other, aren't you?" she added, glancing at Fuuka and Fumika.

"Yep," Fuuka asserted proudly.

"Gek," Fumika asserted incoherently.

Negi's mouth hung open with not even the slightest noise coming out.

"You think that's bad, wait until she tells you what she said about Chamo," Asuna said with the slightest ghost of amusement in her voice.

"Glarghle?" replied Negi.

"Oh, boy," Asuna sighed. "Well, if they didn't break him, that certainly did the trick."

"Huh? What are you talking about?" Makie asked, bewildered.

"Uh ... can't you see how he's -"

"Gnaggag?"

"- well, doing what he's doing?"

"Oh, he's probably just trying to cheer you up by clowning around," she replied dismissively.

Asuna considered this. "Hm. Well. It's working. Kind of." She shook her head. "So, about that plan, then -"

Negi's thoughts quickly regained coherence. "Oh, yes, it's very clever!"

"Uh-huh. And this plan, that you couldn't come up with before now, when we thought we had months to put it all together, will work now that we have only days ... even though when I came in you were talking about how you needed more time ... how does it go, exactly?"

"That's the clever part!" Negi enthused. "You see -" He broke off, rather abruptly.

"And now you're realizing a problem you hadn't seen before, aren't you?" Asuna asked knowingly.

She was right, but not for the reasons she thought. Usually, when he started talking about his plans to her, Asuna looked amazed, slightly amused, sometimes verging on confusion, but always with an obvious air of confidence, of belief in him. And that air was utterly absent, now, replaced by, at best, tolerance.

 _Hypnotized by the hard choice,_  he'd said earlier, and now he was certain that was the case. Even if he told her exactly what he planned, she wouldn't believe it would work ... and without that belief, it wasn't going to work, no matter what he did.

Negi smiled, warmly. "It's all right, Asuna. I'll take care of everything."

"Oh boy," Asuna sighed.

"We'll help!" Makie and the twins chorused.

"Thank you, I'm going to need your help," he assured them. "And, no, Asuna, I'm not just saying that to ease their feelings."

"Did I say anything?"

He was about to say something to the effect that she hadn't had to, when he heard the door opening again. When Asuna and Makie had entered, he'd been distracted. Not this time. And so, in less time than it took to describe it, he performed a magic he'd been practicing for a while now.

"Oohc-ha!" he sneezed in reverse.

"Eh?" chorused the twins, who were abruptly dressed, as was he.

"Tadaima," Setsuna said wearily, as she walked in carrying Konoka, with Kouko trailing not far behind.

"What in the world happened?" Asuna asked, rousing a bit from her near stupor.

"I beat up Tsukuyomi," Konoka explained.

"... no, seriously, what happened?"

As Konoka made a sound of annoyance, Negi swiftly turned to look at Kouko. The lady nodded once.

"Are you all right?" he promptly asked Konoka.

"Been better," Konoka admitted wearily.

"You mean you seriously -" Asuna started to ask.

"Ojousama was magnificent," Setsuna interjected, eyes shining with pride.

"It was just a fight, Setchan."

"Yes, a magnificent battle of will and courage!"

"Okay, I'm pretty sure I don't get this hepped up when you have a fight, so you're seriously overdoing it. You don't need to use magnificent in every sentence describing me." Beat. "Once or twice each day will probably do."

Negi glanced at Kouko again, subtly indicating Asuna with a nod of his head. This time, the lady shook her head in denial. Negi gave a sigh. Once again, it was being left to him. He was really becoming somewhat annoyed with the elder members of the Konoe family when it came to this particular tendency.

Now, however, was not the time to address such concerns. "Konoka-san, Setsuna-san, I'm sorry to have to dump more unhappiness on both of you when you're obviously quite exhausted, but -"

"I'm getting frozen in a couple of days instead of a few months," Asuna announced.

Dead silence fell for a moment.

Eventually, Konoka shifted in Setsuna's grip - not difficult given Setsuna's current abject paralysis - until she was looking over her girlfriend's shoulder at her mother. "You knew?" she asked quietly.

Kouko looked away.

"Figures," Konoka said quietly. "Setchan, please set me down next to her, okay?"

As Setsuna silently half-stumbled over to the couch and proceeded to follow her mistress' commands, Makie spoke up. "But it's okay, Konoka-chan! Negi-kun has a plan, you see, and while he's working out the plan, we're going to see that Asuna has every opportunity to fuhn huhn uhn huhnuffa hweh ... huhm?"

For a wonder, the hand over Makie's mouth belonged to Fumika. "Shhh!" she said. "Don't spoil the surprise!" She nodded, she thought subtly, in Kouko's general direction.

Makie followed the nod, checked Kouko out, and nodded. "Uhn huhnnn!" she mumbled agreeably.

Konoka and Asuna, hugging tightly, didn't really pay any attention to any of that.

* * *

A few minutes later, Negi finally managed to tear himself away from the relatively small and somewhat quiet party (not to be confused with an orgy) which had broken out in the dorm room. As he'd left, he'd seen Makie covertly making phone calls to get more of the class to come on over and share the news. The party was going to grow, and if he didn't leave when he did, he might not be able to do so at all.

On the whole, though, he approved of what Makie had done. The first phase of his plan demanded the restoration of Asuna's self-confidence. Konoka would do her part in that, and so would Setsuna. And Makie and the others would contribute as well. But there was one individual whose presence and involvement was absolutely critical to any morale effort involving Asuna, and it was up to him to recruit her. And so he quickly headed over to room 665, and knocked firmly on the door.

It was answered by a grown-up Kotaro, stripped to the waist and wearing a tie as a headband. "Yah?" he said by way of greeting.

"... Kotaro-kun, why are you wearing a tie as a headband?" Negi asked after a moment of careful consideration when it came to his words.

"I have no idea whatsoever," Kotaro admitted.

The two rivals spent a silent moment reflecting on the conversation thus far. Negi delicately attempted to smell whether any illicit beverages were being consumed. That was not the most recognizable smell, however, and he quickly abandoned the effort and decided not to make inquiries on the subject. Kotaro, meanwhile, scratched his ass.

"Well, then. I see you've returned to your former abode," Negi said at last.

"Yep. Couple days ago, actually."

"Good, I'm glad that things have worked out well between you and your roommates."

"Kotaaaaaa," Natsumi's voice issued from further back in the room, sounding both plaintive and demanding. "Just get rid of whoever it is and get back here."

"Very well, apparently," Negi added.

"Yeah, that it has," Kotaro agreed. "So if this is a social call -"

"No, I - um, is Ayaka holed up in her room while you -"

"Iinchou? Nah. When I moved back in, her and Chizu-ne kinda decided to unofficially move out. I think they're both hiding out at the dreamhouse, lately. Together, like. Maybe."

"I don't know why you're emphasizing that, you already said they were both there, so I don't see how 'together' amplifies -"

"'Together'," Kotaro repeated. Then held up both hands in V signs, before pushing the Vs together in front of Negi's eyes.

"Ohhhh," Negi said in comprehension. "Really? I had no idea that ... well, okay, I guess I had  _some_  idea that - never mind. Her being there works even better for my purposes. Thank you."

"You're welcome. Bye now," Kotaro said, and began to close the door.

"Oh!" Negi added sharply. "Um, just one more thing?"

"Yes, Detective Columbo?" the dog boy asked.

"Who? No, never mind. Um ... are you spending a lot of time in aged up form recently?"

"About fifty-fifty. Thanks for lending me your spare age-up pills, now that you don't need 'em."

"You're welcome ... if you wanted to thank me, you could do me one little favor, though. Um ... should Makie come to you and ask to borrow some of those pills, I'd really appreciate it if you'd refuse on ... whatever grounds you'd care to use," he concluded after a moment.

Kotaro blinked. Then, with great solemnity, he reached out and rested a hand on Negi's shoulder. "Negi ... my brother-in-arms. Fear not. I will not give Makie-san any magical pills if she comes to ask me for some in the future."

"Thank y-" Negi started to say, feeling immensely relieved ... until he abruptly realized why that phrasing seemed so familiar.

"Kotaro!" Natsumi's voice called again, this time sounding very sour.

"Gotta go," Kotaro said, and quickly closed the door.

"Wai-" Negi said, maybe a second before it shut completely. "Ohhhkay," he said to himself, as he reached into his pants pocket and produced a certain card.

* * *

And so, bright and early the next day, Negi and Asuna found themselves once again in the passenger compartment of a luxury car driving to Ayaka's mansion on the outskirts of Mahora.

"If she has her maids pull that welcome himesama bit again, I'm turning around and leaving if I have to walk all the way home," Asuna declared gloomily.

"I'm sure that she wouldn't -" Negi began to say, then paused, pulled out his card and began a telepathic communication to which Asuna wasn't privy. The sight of it at least got her to chuckle faintly, where all the fun of last night's party had at best produced the ghost of a smile on her face. He decided to count it as a victory.

"I haven't told her the details of the situation, only that you need a face to face with her," Negi said once his communication was done. "I'd strongly suggest that you should lead with the whole truth this time."

"Got it," Asuna agreed absent-mindedly as she looked out the window. "It's really beautiful, isn't it?"

"The countryside around Mahora? Yes, I think it's quite -"

"The world," Asuna clarified.

Negi fell silent, and nodded after a moment.

"There've been times and places where things weren't nearly so pretty," she continued. "I was really very lucky to have lived in this age, and this land. I'm a lucky, lucky girl."

He didn't have a thing to say to that.

At the door, they were greeted by a single maid, who patiently and quietly lead them to the breakfast nook where Ayaka and Chizuru were already waiting for them. "Good morning, sensei!" Ayaka said cheerfully, rising to greet them. "And you," she added to Asuna.

"Sensei. Asuna-san," Chizuru likewise greeted them, without rising.

"Iinchou, Chizuru-san, hello," Negi said. "I'm so sorry that Kotaro's actions have, uh -"

"Driven me from house and home?" Chizuru asked.

"I wasn't going to put it quite like that."

"Well, it's not really Kotaro-kun's fault, so there's no real need to apologize on his behalf. I'm sure that I'll be able to go back once Natsumi-chan calms down and forgives me. Or once hell freezes over. Whichever happens first," she said airily.

"I'm sure that things will be all right," Negi replied uncomfortably.

"He does that a lot," Asuna said.

"I've noticed that tendency."

"He's even doing that about the way I'm going to be put in suspended animation later this week instead of in a couple of months," she added. "Is that enough of a lead for you?" she asked Negi.

"WHAT?!" Ayaka shrieked.

"Well, it certainly does reveal the facts," Negi admitted as he felt the headache come back.

"Why is this -" Ayaka began to shriek some more.

"Ayaka. Please calm down," Chizuru said soothingly.

"Butbutbut -" Ayaka replied, pointing furiously at Asuna, Negi, and a few interesting looking objets d'art which had the misfortune of being in their general direction.

"Their situation will not change if you lose your composure," Chizuru pointed out. "Now, Asuna-san, I would appreciate it if you would elaborate on what you just said. Please bear in mind that this is the first I've heard of any of it."

Asuna proceeded to explain the whole situation, leaving nothing out. "And now it's going to happen a lot sooner than I was expecting. I'll be entering that sleep later this week, and not emerging until, probably, a hundred years."

"I see," said Chizuru, lifting up a cup of tea. "Well. Good riddance, then." And she sipped gently.

"Thank yehhhhhhh," Asuna said reflexively, drawling to a halt when she realized that, no, she hadn't imagined it, Chizuru had really said that, and Negi and Ayaka were gaping at her. "Uh," she added.

"Was there something?" Chizuru asked, blinking.

"... why would you -" she started to say.

"Oh. Well, I deduced from your complete lack of reaction to Ayaka's obvious distress at the idea that she's not the first person to be told this, and so you're probably quite tired of hearing meaningless words of solace and comfort. No doubt it gets boring after a while. So I decided to give you an honest response, since I really don't care if I ever see you again, personally. In other words, good riddance." She nodded for punctuation.

"Chizuru-san, you are being unfathomably -" Ayaka began to rant.

"You're lying," Asuna said quietly, her softly-spoken words stopping Ayaka in mid-outburst.

"Am I," Chizuru replied coolly.

"Yes. I ... you were there, back then. You were there with all the others, calling out to me. I heard your voice. You didn't, don't hate me. I know better," Asuna affirmed.

"I was there," Chizuru said. "I wasn't terribly happy to be there. I remember frowning, quite clearly. But I was willing to set my personal feelings about you - or rather the complete lack of them, since you're really basically a type of insect that I'd prefer to ignore - because I realized that a number of the people about whom I do care a great deal also care about you, and would be devastated by their loss. And so I prayed for your well-being, as I haven't prayed for anything in quite some time.

"And now? Now I learn that I needn't have bothered. Because what we were trying to rescue you from, is going to claim you anyway. And you don't care." She paused, shook her head. "For a girl who is only notionally Japanese, you have certainly mastered the attitude 'it can't be helped'. Congratulations, I suppose."

"That isn't fair, Chizuru-san!" Negi protested. "She's, she's obviously hurt by all of this, and you're -"

"Negi-kun," Chizuru snapped. "She is neither an infant nor an idiot. She can speak for herself. Can't you?" she demanded of Asuna.

"... are you trying to make me cry?" Asuna asked, almost inaudibly. "Is that it?

"No. I don't care if you cry or not. If you do, it can't be helped," she repeated. "Honestly? Do you really want to know what I honestly want from you?"

"Yes."

Chizuru stared at Asuna for a long moment, then shook her head. "I remember the day you came into our class for the first time. I remember you staring at all of us with just the sort of indifference that you've been showing us all through this conversation. It was horrifying. And I remember ... I remember a girl who then got angry when another girl, a wonderful but horribly  _pushy_  girl, started talking to her ... and it was such a relief, to see that you were human after all.

"People are trying to take your life away from you! They are going to take my choices away from me, but at least I have the comfort of knowing that I'll have a life, even if it's not the one I would have chosen for myself! Don't talk about self-sacrifice, or necessary evils, or what has to be, or anything like that. This is something that's being done to you, not something you chose. What do I want from you? I want you to  _GET ANGRY, DAMMIT!_ "

Asuna screamed.

The delicate crystal glasses on the table exploded. The windows of the breakfast nook shuddered in their fixings. In the mansion's kennels, the guard dogs began baying in response. Ayaka dropped to her knees, covering her ears and staring at the other girl in obvious terror. Negi started to reach out to take her in an embrace, only to hold back as he realized this was not a cry of pain, but of unfathomable fury that underlay it.

Chizuru, in the full force of the blast, was unmoved. When at last the horrible noise ended, she was the first to speak. "And what do you want, Asuna-san?" she asked, her voice normal, but sounding impossibly quiet in the wake of what had just passed.

"... I want to live," Asuna whimpered.

"Well, good, then," Chizuru said, then turned to look at her tea. She made a face as she realized that the cup was now lying on its side, its former contents now soaking the table cloth. "Karma," she murmured, shaking her head, before turning to look at Negi. "I expect that you have a plan."

He nodded in silence, not trusting himself to speak at the moment, as Asuna covered her face with her hands and sobbed silently while Ayaka rose up to hug her tightly.

For the first time, actual emotion showed on her face. "Have I hindered it, by doing what I did, just now?" she asked.

Now he shook his head. "If anything ..." he began to say, then clammed up.

"Oh," Chizuru replied, blinking in surprise. "Ohhhh," she repeated, nodding as understanding dawned. "Well. Achievements in ignorance remain achievements, I suppose." She started to stand up. "If you'll excuse me, then, I'll leave the rest to -"

"SIT," said Asuna, face still in her hands. "DOWN," she concluded.

Chizuru sat. "Interesting," she said faintly. "I knew that worked on Kotaro-kun, but I didn't expect that it would work on me, too."

Asuna took a deep breath before she lowered her hands. She glanced at Ayaka, standing beside her, with a look of genuine appreciation, before turning to glare at Chizuru. "Just curious, but did you use that line on him before you fucked him?"

The taller girl blushed slightly. "Well, I suppose it was inevitable that you'd find out while he was hiding out in your dorm room."

"Yeah, it was. Specifically, I found out right before I used that line on him and fucked him."

Silence reigned for a moment.

"Well, actually, it was more like before I used that line on him and then Chisame and I fucked him, and each other. I forget, did I tell you about Chisame being there or not?" Asuna asked Negi, glancing past Ayaka's pale, paralyzed face.

"I ... can't say that I remember, off hand," Negi replied.

"Y-you -" Chizuru started to stammer.

"It was really sort of cute, the way Negi was all 'I'm not jealous' in a way that really made it obvious that he was totally jealous. You know what I mean?" she asked, reaching out to her side to put a hand firmly on Ayaka's hip. "Yes, he was going about with that expression on his face, the one on yours right now. You definitely know what I'm talking about," she added.

Chizuru took a moment to swallow - not easily, since her mouth was unexpectedly rather dry - and calm herself down. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Same reason I've been doing all sorts of things, lately. 'Why not?' Oh, I had all sorts of justifications - like how I wanted to thank the people who'd helped me out with the most precious thing I had - but since I've just had it made very clear to me that not all of them were really all that interested in helping me, as such, what with me being a species of insect or something, I guess those justifications are looking a tad bit flimsy at the moment," Asuna explained.

"So then -"

"I'm telling you all this because I've decided you're going to join Negi's harem, and I'm probably going to fuck you too, and, since I'm such a swell person despite being a species of insect, I think you're going to also get something else you wanted. Close your mouth, Ya-chan, flies might get in," she added, pushing Ayaka's slack jaw upwards with her pointer finger.

"Wait ... what?" Ayaka said, shifting the pointer finger just slightly.

"How can someone so smart be so darn slow?" Asuna asked wearily.

"It's called being methodical," Negi explained as he began to unbutton his shirt.

"Oh, so she's like you, then, okay," Asuna answered, lowering her hand and starting to undo the fastenings of Ayaka's dress. "We're going to have sex, and since Chizuru-san is such a nice person that she'll help people she thinks of as insects if people she likes like them, you're going to reward her for her niceness by giving her a ride on the Iinchou train."

"The Iinchou train?" Chizuru asked, watching all this with her elbow on the table and the palm of that hand on her chin.

"Wait ... what?" Ayaka repeated.

"Oh, boy, she's stalled out."

"I have not!" Ayaka protested. "I am simply a bit startled by how and where this is going so suddenly! And, and, how did you know about Chizuru-san's feelings for me, Asuna-san?"

"I've had my tongue up you and I'm still getting '-san'?"

"There are proprieties to be observed! Now answer my damned question before fiddling with my bra!"

Asuna made a frustrated noise. "Like I said, I've seen the way she looks at you. It was the same way I was looking at Takahata-sensei for the last few years. It's not that complicated, but I suppose you don't realize that. So can I get back to figuring how this thing unhooks, already? Why do you have to wear such complicated -"

Ayaka made a simple gesture and the bra dropped off easily.

"Oh, good grief, don't tell me you've gone in for golem wear, too?" Asuna asked, startled but not enough to stop her from starting to grab the exposed breasts and thumb their firm nipples.

"I don't know what that means - nnn! - but for your information, I  _was_  aware of Chizuru-san's feelings for me!" Ayaka explained through clenched teeth.

"I confessed during the party after your liberation," Chizuru elaborated, eyes clearly on the exposed mammaries. "Unfortunately ..."

"Wow, all sorts of things happened then," Asuna mused. "And you and Negi should definitely get together to chat about confessing to your true love and it not going anywhere."

"Yes, because you wouldn't know anything about thaaaa," Ayaka said as Asuna's other hand went down her panties from the rear.

"Oh, so you told Maki-chan, then?" Chizuru asked, eyebrow raised.

Negi, who was folding up his pants, slowly turned to look at her with a stricken expression.

"Akira, not Makie," Asuna explained.

"... really."

"Yes, really!" Asuna confirmed. "Negi, why are you not chiming in here? Stop making those awful faces and confirm this situation!"

"I'm sorry, Asuna, what was that? I'm having a bit of trouble hearing you over the sounds this headache is making in my head," Negi replied, hands over his face.

"In any event!" Ayaka interjected, letting her outfit's skirt drop to the ground around her feet. "I have explained to Chizuru-san that while I accept and honor her feelings, I do not share them, as my heart belongs exclusively to Negi-sensei -"

"- even though you've shared your lady parts with me and him," said Asuna, as both of her hands got down to the business of gently caressing the aforementioned lady parts.

"That-that-that happened afterwards!" Ayaka protested. "And - urgh!" With some difficulty, though not nearly as much as she might have had if Asuna was actually trying, she got out of Asuna's grip and stumbled over to Negi. "And the heart, in the end, is what matters. Isn't it, Negi-sensei! And even though Akira-san has clearly spurned your fragile feelings, know that this Yukihiro Ayaka will never do so, no matter whaaaa oh yes, that beautiful beast is revealed!" she concluded as Negi slid down his boxers. Moments later, she was down between his legs, her long blonde hair bouncing as her head bobbed back and forth.

"'The heart', huh?" Asuna mused, watching with an eyebrow raised.

"It's moderately depressing that one who is supposedly the heart of our class doesn't seem to regard the concept with much esteem," Chizuru answered, watching without an obvious expression.

Asuna ignored that remark. "You seriously thought it was Makie?"

"In as much as I ever gave the subject much consideration."

"Uh-huh. Well, he's lucky that it wasn't," Asuna said, not looking at Negi and not seeing him twitch from reasons that had nothing to do with Ayaka's talented fellation. "I love her a lot, and she's a great lay, but that girl is a total tramp." Twitch. "She's into everything, boys, girls, family members, complete strangers, the occasional ermine." Twitch. "If it was her, Negi would be heading for heartbreak for sure."

"Negi-sensei!" Ayaka cried, apalled. "Why are you going soft?!"

"What?" Asuna snapped, bells in her hang jingling as she turned sharply to stare at Negi.

Of course, being an experienced man of the world - or at least as emotionally damaged - Negi was able to remain calm despite the horrified looks being directed at him. "Maybe this isn't the right time for this," he said. "After all, we don't really have to do anything if you don't want to."

"... what in the world are you talking about?" Ayaka asked, bewildered.

"I don't know, really, I just always feel compelled to say that for some reason. Maybe it's a motto of some sort, which I somehow know instinctively. Or a transformation phrase," he began to speculate, tilting his head to the side and going a bit starry-eyed. "Wouldn't that be wonderful if it were the case?"

"Oh dear," said Chizuru, shaking her head as she gracefully rose from the table where she'd been seated. "I think Negi-kun might be having some difficulties. Alas for my own helpless need to assist young people in difficulty," she said sorrowfully as she reached behind her neck and pulled some sort of string back there, loosening the neck of her dress enough that it slipped down around her shoulders, and then, once she lowered her arms so that they hung at her side, the rest of the way down to the floor, leaving her clad in a dark purple bustier and matching panties, which - notably - left her breasts exposed. "Ah well. It cannot be helped."

"What?" Asuna asked, now whipping her head back and forth between angles which gave her a view of Ayaka frantically rubbing Negi's dick with her tits and those which gave her a view of Chizuru. "What are you  _wearing_?" she finally demanded, likely of the latter.

"Underwear," Chizuru answered, reasonably enough. Then, perhaps but probably not taking mercy on Asuna's beleaguered neck muscles, she casually ambled over to Ayaka and Negi, pressing her breasts up against his chest as her spare hand, the one not wrapping around his shoulders to hug him closely, went down to tease Ayaka's hair. "It's all right to be heartbroken, you know. Even for the savior of the world," she murmured, just loud enough for him to hear.

"But -" he stammered in response, not really sure what he wanted to say beyond that.

"It's all right. But remember that hearts mend, and a great heart has a lot of room," she added, then turned her face to smile at him, and kissed him deeply.

"Hurhuroo-hun?!" Ayaka babbled around the phallus she'd started sucking again a moment ago, which was now resurgent in her mouth, which was probably the reason, or at least one of them, that her eyes had gone so wide.

After a moment, Chizuru released Negi's lips, and smiled gently at him. "A  _lot_  of room," she repeated, then easily sank down to her knees so that she was beside Ayaka.

"You'll share with me, right?" she added, smiling ingratiatingly.

Ayaka felt torn. On the one hand, what she wanted to say was 'no no never mine mine mine alllll mine!'. But that was completely inappropriate. One of her stature should be generous. She considered briefly just making helplessly confused noises while still sucking the wonderful thing in her mouth, but that would be rude. And so, with some apprehension, she pulled back to say, "Of course, I'll shuuhh."

Really, some part of her brain scolded the rest as she was kissed just as deeply as Negi had just been, she should have seen that coming.

"... wait, why am I the only one not having sex?" Asuna protested. When no answer came - which was annoying, since at least one person in the room wasn't engaged in activities demanding the use of his mouth - she made a frustrated noise and stomped over and began engaging in the use of that mouth. (She kissed Negi deeply, in other words, for the benefit of whatever poor fool reading this can't get innuendo.)

As Asuna did so, her presence nearby was noted by Chizuru, who broke her own kiss to look up at Asuna. "Well, I suppose we should do our part as well," she mused.

"Mruuhh?" inquired Ayaka, who - at least for the second that Negi was able to glance at her while Asuna was kissing him - looked a bit like Chachamaru had after receiving her pactio.

Chizuru delicately tapped the shaft of the enormous organ which pointed upwards near both their faces.

"Uhhhh," Ayaka replied, indicating her comprehension with a slight nod ... then, with a slight sideways gesture of her head, indicated her hesitant but continued acquiescence to Chizuru's earlier, somewhat deceptive request to share.

A smile slowly spread across Chizuru's face. "There's the Ayaka that I know and love," she said softly. She turned to look at it, both because it should be looked at and to keep her from seeing the fact that the smile didn't really reach her eyes. This would be the first one since Kotaro-kun, whose member had been much smaller, and his had been the first since -

Well. She didn't have to think about that, since Negi-kun was nothing like either of them. A bit like Kotaro-kun, perhaps, but certainly nothing like -

Well. She didn't have to think about that. So she didn't. Instead, she took a deep breath, painted the smile on more firmly, and took first the head, then the rest of the shaft, into her mouth ... and then the rest of the way, into her throat, until her lips were kissing his thatch of pubic hair. As Ayaka had earlier, she shifted back and forth a bit - not as far, admittedly - to give him some more sensation. From the look on his face as he stared down at her, she suspected that he was more startled than pleased by this. Well, it wasn't exactly pleasant for her either, but she supposed that feeling the member bend in ways that it wasn't really meant to bend probably felt worse than having her throat filled in ways that it was never really meant to - oh, she'd better pull back, her vision was starting to go dark.

Oh, air felt  _good_  sometimes. In fact, it felt so good that she let the member, now slick with her saliva, slip the rest of the way out of her mouth. She held it in place with her lips as she glanced at Ayaka, just as wide-eyed as Negi, and lifted an eyebrow inquiringly.

Ayaka hesitatingly nodded, and she passed it to her, delicately kissing the girl's cheek once it was in her mouth - a bit deeper than it had been in there before, but not, thankfully, as deep as she'd taken it. (If the girl did not acknowledge limitations, she was not, at least, stupid. Most of the time.)

Now that that slightly unnerving display was over - seriously, Chizuru was  _such_  a showoff - Asuna slowly began to shift Negi backwards, in order to lay him on his back on the floor. It wasn't the simplest procedure, given that, even under the circumstances, he was the exact opposite of 'weak in the knees', but with Ayaka and Chizuru (whose hands and tongue were occupied with his balls) serving as distractions, she managed to do it. Honestly, it would have been a lot simpler to lay him out on the table, but she doubted that it would take the weight of all of them, to say nothing of the stress which was sure to follow.

And, once again, once Negi's attention returned to his surroundings, he made a face. "And here I am, on my back again, without even having noticed," he grumbled.

"Look on the bright side, it didn't happen while you were lecturing anyone this time," Asuna told him cheerfully.

"I suppose that is a good thing, now that you menhugh," Negi reluctantly agreed in the moments before she sat on his face.

"Ohhhkay then!" Asuna cheered as he promptly got to work eating her out, toes almost curled as she almost lost herself in the moment. (She owned it.) "Out of you two privileged and wealthy young ladies -"

"- said the princess of an entire planet," Chizuru and Ayaka chorused, the latter coming up specifically to join in on the sass.

Asuna ignored that with an attitude which can only be termed 'regal'. "- which one wants the first ride on our stallion, here?" she continued, reaching down to tickle Negi's waist just above his pubic hair. He shuddered, making the organ wave slightly. "Will it be the experienced equestrian? Or the ... um ... darn, it's hard to keep up a metaphor, sometimes ... the, uh, the dog fancier?"

"Dog fancier?" Chizuru repeated.

"Metaphors are tricky things!"

Ayaka took a deep breath. "It should be Chizuru-san. To atone for the terrible pain I have caused her, the heartbreak and sorrow, and to compensate for the fact that I will never be hers -"

"Never?" Chizuru repeated.

"- in any permanent sense," Ayaka added just a bit quickly. "To compensate for that, I shall generously allow Chizuru-san the first, as a hopelessly vulgar person might put it, 'ride'."

"So generous!" said Chizuru. "So noble! So unlikely to be using reverse psychology!"

"I dunno, she might -"

"Shut up, Asuna," said Chizuru, who was - quite startlingly quickly - mounted on Negi's shaft, and pumping up and down with practiced ease.

Ayaka had apparently kept a handkerchief from the table setting just so that she could tear at it with her teeth for just such a moment.

"Oh?" Asuna said, as her own hips rocked and rolled above Negi's mouth. "Did someone tell me to shut up? Unfortunately, being a species of insect, I can't really understand human language sometimes!"

"This - nyah! - is actually a pleasant experience, but I will admit that being compelled to watch you while I do it somewhat diminishes thaaaaat!" Chizuru gasped.

"Oh yeah?" Asuna breathed, then turned around so that she had her back to Chizuru, and bent forward slightly. "Guess what you can kiss!"

It would be easy, Chizuru realized, to do something rather different to that ass. All she would have to do was say one small word in Latin, and then - but no. That would be abusing the trust Negi had placed in her. She would not do so for so little provocation.

After a moment of thought, however, Asuna's slim straight back, leaning the way that it did, suggested some useful notions to Chizuru. "Ayaka," she said ingratiatingly to the girl still crouched behind her.

"Nnnnn?" Ayaka replied, having pretty much torn the handkerchief to pieces by this point.

"That's very bad for your teeth, you know," she said almost reflexively. Then, shaking her head, she continued in a more ingratiating tone. "Come here, dear."

Eyes expressing vague bewilderment, Ayaka crawled forward just enough for Chizuru to reach out at pull her the rest of the way forward, setting her down on Negi's stomach, her face to Chizuru's face, her back to Asuna's back, and her legs spread so that her knees hooked over Chizuru's hips. Ayaka just had enough time to make a noise of confusion before Chizuru kissed her again ... and pulled Ayaka's hips so that their vulvae pressed against each other, specifically their clitoral areas.

"Hey, what are you -" Asuna asked, unable to see.

"Not how I dreamed it," Chizuru admitted, once she pulled out of the kiss, her hips rocking as she fucked back against Negi, then forward against Ayaka. "Not even remotely. It doesn't matter that it's not now how I dreamed it. It doesn't matter if it never happens again. It doesn't matter if I have to marry a bastard who doesn't know the meaning of the word 'no' and only wants me to fund his lifestyle. None of that matters. I will take what I can get from this life, and I take this. I love you, Ayaka, and -"

"Chizuru?" Ayaka asked weakly.

"Yes?"

"Shut up and fuck me."

"Okay then." She proceeded to do so.

"Yeah, the table would be broken by now," Asuna mused as she felt the bodies grinding against each other behind her.

"Murghle."

"I'm glad you agree."

It didn't take terribly long. She'd achieved a few orgasms, brought Ayaka to a comparable few, and, from the sounds of things, a "species of insect" - Asuna's words, not hers, exactly - had known a few of her own. (Not that Asuna's pleasure mattered all that much to her, under the circumstances. Under any circumstances, actually.) And from the sensation of Negi's dick, within her, and the sounds that he was making, muffled by Asuna's muff, it seemed he was fast approaching his climax, about to shoot his rich man juice up into her moist, receptive womb.

Chizuru decided that she had other ideas. On her last bounce, she jerked herself completely free of him, then shifted backwards, so that on the downstroke of her motion she slid down, her vulva pressed up against the bottom of the shaft, her hands pulling Ayaka close once more so that  _her_  vulva pressed up against the top, squeezing it between them. It was a very complicated procedure, and she supposed that she should be proud of herself for pulling it off so efficiently without rehearsal. Could Makie have done so quite so well?

Perhaps. And perhaps - no, there was no perhaps about it - what Makie had done would have been done with far more of that elusive element called 'heart'.  _Ah well,_  she decided, as Negi spewed his emission upwards towards their stomachs and the bottoms of their breasts.  _I do what I can._

Delicately, she reached down, smeared the cum on her fingertips, and brought it up to Ayaka's mouth. After a moment of hesitation, Ayaka came forward and slid her lips down around the fingers, tongue wrapping them up tightly for a moment, before she let them slide free and leaned in to kiss Chizuru's lips.

 _Bliss,_  Chizuru thought as she tasted the semen slipping into her mouth along with Ayaka's saliva.

"Um not that I want to interrupt your fun time -" Asuna started to say, having swiveled around so as to get a partial look at what was going on 'behind' her.

"Then don't," Chizuru growled, in a momentary interruption of the kiss.

Asuna laughed a bit uncomfortably. "- but, y'know, that thing is still good for three or four goes, so we might as well get at it, right? I mean, he's still gotta do me, Ayaka, maybe those two maids who are standing behind the closed door and breathing rather heavily -"

Chizuru's own decidedly-not-superhuman ears were able to make out a tiny squeal and then the sounds of two sets of feet scurrying away.

"- or maybe not," Asuna said agreeably.

Noting the incredibly hungry way that Ayaka was staring at the dick, Chizuru could only sigh. "You're right. Are you ready for round two, Negi-kun?"

Asuna slid off his face to let him answer.

"Oh, breathing is good," he murmured.

"I've always thought so," Chizuru agreed, smiling fondly.

* * *

Later - much,  _much_  later, for the sun was well on the way down towards the west - after enough time and activity to expend the energy of an immortal, to say nothing of the energy of a moderately superhuman girl and that of a pair of moderately tough girls who were not quite superhuman, Negi found himself in his boxers, staring out Ayaka's bedroom window at the sun on its journey (not directly, of course; he was unsettled, not crazy) and wondering whether this was going to be the way each step of his plan would go. He suspected that it probably was, and enough of the humble and modest boy he'd been when he came to Mahora yet remained in his heart to feel a small amount of shame at the prospect.

On the other hand, the not-at-all-humble-or-modest young man he'd become felt just as much anticipation.

Arms wrapped around him as he stood at the window, holding him tightly. He glanced to the side, fully expecting to see a tail of bright orange hair out the corner of his eye, and was genuinely startled to see several locks of long blonde hair. "I thought you'd still be asleep," he said quietly.

"I slept through round four, remember?" Ayaka replied in the same low tone. "Why do they call them that, anyway?"

"Eh?"

"Rounds. They don't seem to have anything to do with circles."

"... I'm honestly not sure," Negi admitted.

"I've stumped the teach," she said, then laughed quietly.

To cover his mild shock both at having been stumped and at having heard Ayaka use such terminology, he turned further, to look back at Asuna and Chizuru, lying together on what was left of the bed, antagonism vanished in sleep. (Well, to be honest, their antagonism had vanished a few times in the hours of frantic sexual congress before then, notably when they'd fallen into a sexually charged sixty-nine, as opposed to ... never mind. Anyway, the antagonism always came back, and probably would again once they woke up. So Negi enjoyed the sight of the two of them at peace while it lasted.)

Ayaka followed his gaze in silence for a moment. "I'm not sure if I did a good thing just now or not," she admitted.

"Welcome to the club," he told her - not sarcastically, but with empathy, and patting her hand as he said it.

"Heh," she said - not laughed - then grew quiet once more. "I wish I loved her more than I do," she said at last.

"I wish I loved all of you more than I do."

She kissed him on the back of the head. "Don't one-up me, Negi."

"Sorry."

"You said that you had a plan. If I might ask -"

"I was going to tell you, actually. I'm going to need your help, and Chizuru's help, also, for this phase of it. Honestly, you're the linchpin of it."

"I'm flattered. Tell me."

And he did so, at length, outlining every part of it, watching her eyes grow wide with horror and shock.

"... you can't be serious," she breathed when he was done.

"I am. It's the best plan I can come imagine."

"But ... but Negi! So much could go wrong, and if -"

"If it goes wrong, then millions of people, on both worlds, will die, Asuna will be lost forever, and everything that we've done since we returned from the Magical World will have been utterly wasted," he answered. "And this is still the best plan that I've been able to imagine."

Ayaka shook her head. "It's ..."

"Will you help me?" Negi asked. "Please, will you help me?"

"... sometimes," she said, after a long moment of simply staring at him, "I wish I loved you ...  _less_."

He nodded understanding.

"Yukihiro Ayaka will devote all the resources of herself and her family to ensuring that this plan succeeds," she concluded.

"Thank you."

**To Be Continued.**


	15. Natsumi, Mana, Zazie

The first set of knocks distracted Fate from the book he was reading only slightly. He lifted his eyes from the rows of English text in momentary consideration of the door to his apartment, then, with the vague hope that whoever it was would promptly give up and go away, went back to reading. Negi had recommended the novel to him, which was as good a reason to keep studying it as any, but the subject matter was compelling as well - an attempt much like their own, though based on Taprobane instead of Japan. Negi had spoken of visiting the now-quite elderly author and thanking him for the inspiration by revealing their plans to him, but Fate thought that would probably be going a bit far.

Getting the man's autograph on this copy might be worthwhile, however.

Another set of knocks ensued, and, with a sigh of exasperation, Fate set down the book and rose from his chair. Before he could start walking towards the door, however, a voice sounded. "Fate-kun! I know you're in there! I can hear you breathing!"

Frowning - and morally certain that he did not breathe that loudly - Fate walked to the door, just a touch more briskly than he might have otherwise. He opened it a crack, enough to see his guest but not enough - considering his arm was holding the door in place - to allow it to be shoved the rest of the way open. "Good evening, Shiina-san," he said, as politely as ever. "While there is no curfew in effect, I believe that you are violating certain regulations by being in this building at all."

"Is it true?" Sakurako demanded.

"If you wished to talk to me, it would have been much easier and less rule-breaking to utilize your pactio card's telepathic functions to speak to me from your room," he told her.

"Is it true?" she repeated.

"You are apparently somewhat distraught, however, and so I am inclined to be merciful under the circumstances. You will only have detention after class for the next week instead of the suspension which would normally be imposed on someone in your position."

"Is it  _true_?"

"Yes," he told her.

Her hands clenched at her sides. "No, see, this is where you're supposed to ask 'is what true' and then I tell you, or where you're supposed to confirm that all the rules nonsense you've been spouting is true and maybe even pull out the rulebook and point the ones I'm breaking out to me, and then I go -"

"I can do that, if you wish," he interjected, reaching for one of his pockets.

"Save it!"

"Very well. Be that as it may, it requires no particular imagination on my part to realize that you are referring to Princess Asuna's situation, of which you have clearly become aware. I am curious as to how -"

"The twins told Makie told Misa told me," she rattled off. "I kept my mouth shut all day, today, hoping you'd talk to me about it like a human being -"

"Which I'm not."

"- but you didn't so here I am, and now I'm standing outside your door shouting my lungs out like a crazy person and other teachers are starting to peer out their doors to look at me and what the hell are you waiting for ask me in already, Fate-kun!"

"Won't you come in?" he said mildly, and let his arm fall. She promptly shoved the door the rest of the way open and stomped in past him.

"3-A," he announced to the hallway. He heard more than one quietly voiced noise of comprehension before he closed the door.

"Asuna's going to be put to sleep for a hundred years!" Sakurako snapped at him, once the door was closed and he'd turned to look at her.

"Yes," he said, nodding.

"And this was going to happen anyway but now it's going to happen  _now_!" she continued to shout.

"Yes," he said, nodding.

"And you're not helping to fix this!" she shouted once more, with the air of one reaching a conclusion.

"Yes," he said, nodding.

"Can you say anything other than yes?" Sakurako growled.

"An unfortunate logical difficulty would attend the utterance of the factually correct response to that question, so I will simply state that you already know the answer to your query," he replied, heading over to his chair to pick up the book he'd set down and mark his place before closing it. It was readily apparent that he was not going to be getting back to it for a while to come.

"Why are you being such an - why aren't you helping?" she demanded, visibly checking her earlier question. "Do you not - no, that's a stupid question, isn't it?"

"I am contractually required to answer that there are no stupid questions, regardless of my personal beliefs on the matter," Fate answered. "As you did not complete your question, I can't reasonably evaluate it. If you are asking something along the lines of 'do you not care at all' ... then the answer is complicated." He paused, then, to glance out the window at the dark sky. "I actually do," he said.

Sakurako blinked. "Sorry?"

"I accept your apology."

"I wasn't apologiz- okay, fine. You do care what happens to Asuna?"

"It is somewhat surprising to me, but yes. She is at least as annoying to me as any of you are, but ... her involvement in the project, on the Mundus Magicus side, has been crucial at times. She is revered by the majority of the populace, now that her abilities and nature are known, and we have been able to use that to good effect. Without her active involvement, matters will be harder than they have been. I would greatly prefer to delay her hibernation as long as possible. And ... while I do not have any personal feelings for her," he added, just a bit more quietly, "I am not blind to the fact that her loss will cause pain to others, who do have such feelings. Which I would ... prefer ... to avoid."

Sakurako stared at him in silence for a few moments. "You mean -"

"I mean what I say," he said, turning to look at her, face as stoic as ever. "However, the world is full of things which are other than the way that I would prefer them to be. In this, I am no different from you, or anyone else. And one of those things is the fact that if she does not enter suspension very shortly,  _millions of people will die._  I was created to prevent that from happening, and while I have a choice of methods, I do not have a choice of goals. In that, I am utterly different from you."

"Fine, I get that," she said.

"I strenuously doubt that you do."

"Whatever! But why aren't you helping Negi to come up with some sort of way to -"

There was a knock at the door, much more polite than the earlier pounding. Fate recognized that knock, and without even a moment's hesitation, he turned away from Sakurako and headed over to open the door.

"I've accomplished phases one and two," Negi said, looking exhausted. "It's halfway ready to go. Do you want to hear about it?"

Fate opened his mouth - then, feeling Sakurako's eyes boring into his back, closed it again. "I will listen," he said. "Come in."

* * *

It only took a few minutes for Negi to outline his plan to Fate and Sakurako. Fate was impressed. He would have expected it to take much longer, owing to interruptions from Sakurako. Perhaps she found it difficult to talk while her jaw was hanging so low. A camera would have been very useful. He should probably look into getting one.

"I see," Fate said when Negi reached his conclusion.

"... you see?" Sakurako gasped.

"I see," he repeated with a nod.

"You ... see," she said slowly.

He briefly considered miming the English letters. The possibility of making her think that she'd descended into some sort of surrealist fugue was not without a certain appeal. Instead, he just nodded again. "I see."

"He sees," Sakurako reported to Negi, as one describing a great wonder.

"I heard," Negi replied a bit puckishly.

" _Not cool, Negi-kun!_ " Sakurako roared, shaking her fists in the air. "No, never mind that now! This is crazy! It - I mean - I don't even - what -" She froze in one place, put her hands down. Brought them up to her chest, knuckles pressed against each other and fingers entwined. Lowered them again, sweeping to the sides as she let out a great exhalation. "Okay. Maybe you think that this is a good plan."

"It's the best one I can come up with given the time constraints," Negi interjected.

"And maybe everything that's happened has driven you nuts," she continued.

"I doubt that lazing around like he's been doing could really do that, no matter how tightly wound he'd been before that," Fate observed. He noted that Negi looked away a bit awkwardly in response to that, and was glad to see that he felt appropriate shame for his slovenly behavior.

 _That_  made Sakurako pause, and for a moment, she trembled on the verge of another outburst. Mastering the impulse to tell Fate exactly what and, of course,  _who_  Negi had been doing while quote-unquote lazing around, she pressed on. "But no matter how good of a plan it is, I can't believe you came to tell Fate-kun about it! He'll never go for anything that cuckoo bananas!"

"Since it affects him, and will continue to do so, I thought it was the right thing to do," Negi answered.

"Phase three," Fate said. "You are planning to recruit Tatsumiya and Rainyday to handle what you have dubbed phase three, correct?"

He nodded.

"If they agree, then I might also be willing to lend your plan my assistance during that phase."

Sakurako gaped.

"I would appreciate that," Negi said after a moment.

"I do have one additional condition," he added, in the same casual tone he'd been using through this. "I  _might_  be willing ... if I were to receive an honest answer to the following question ... when Kakizaki and Kugimiya asked for a pactio, what response did they receive?"

With obvious regret on his face, Negi opened his mouth to reply.

"Well, Shiina-san?" Fate pressed.

"Eh?" said Sakurako. "You're asking me?"

"I am asking you," he replied with a nod.

Sakurako looked from Negi to Fate a few dozen times over the next few seconds. "But ... Negi-kun's right here. Why wouldn't you ask him that?"

"Because he assured me, as a gentleman, that he would refuse to give them a pactio when he met them. I would not want to cast aspersions on the word of a gentleman," Fate answered smoothly. "Further, Negi is a teacher. It would be wrong for anyone who wasn't a teacher's immediate superior to inquire into a private conversation between a teacher and his or her students. Just as Negi would never ask me about the interesting discussions I have had with Miyazaki about coffee brewing, I would never ask him about his conversations with any of you, either."

Negi frowned in a way suggestive of a strong desire to make certain inquiries concerning interesting discussions about coffee brewing, but said nothing.

"So let me see if I've got this right," Sakurako said slowly. "You're making your assistance with Negi-kun's crazy plan conditional on me telling you -"

"Honestly," Fate interjected. "Telling me honestly."

"-  _honestly_  ... about what Negi-kun said to Misa and Madoka about giving them pactios. You're only going to help if I do that, even though your help would probably be pretty critical, or Negi wouldn't have come here, I'm guessing. Is that right?"

"I'd say that's an accurate summary, wouldn't you?" Fate casually asked Negi.

Negi looked away.

"I really like Asuna, you know," Sakurako said quietly. "I mean, we don't hang out or anything, but I've always thought she was really cool. And I always knew that no matter what happened to any of us in class, she would always, always, always be in our corner, no matter what. I really like Asuna, you know."

She drew in a deep breath. "None of your business," Sakurako said.

Fate blinked. "You're ... refusing."

"No, I'm not refusing," she said with a firm shake of her head. "That is my answer to your question. It is my honest answer, since I honestly don't think it is any of your business what Negi-kun said to Misa or Madoka on any subject, even that one. So, there you have it. You got an an honest answer to your question, and since you didn't specify that you had to like the answer you got, only that it had to be an honest answer, you're going to help, riiiiight?"

He stared at her for a long moment, then, without a word, offered her a polite bow.

"So then -" Negi started to ask, looking hopeful.

"Talk to Tatsumiya and Rainyday. They may have objections. Assuming that they do not, or that you can overcome their objections and persuade them, however you do these things - is something the matter?" he asked his two guests, who'd started coughing for no apparent reason.

Negi shook his head while covering his mouth. Sakurako looked like she was about to start giggling behind her hand.

Fate felt like raising an eyebrow, but the one time he'd done that, he'd endured great embarrassment when the elderly female member of the faculty he'd been addressing had squealed and called him her 'little Spock-chan' and tried to hug him. So he just pressed on. "- then I will also agree to assist in this endeavor. Doomed to failure though I believe it to be."

"Thank you, Fate," Negi said, lowering his hand and smiling warmly at him. "That means a lot."

"And now it's time for you both to leave," he said, pointing at the door.

* * *

"He really does respect me, doesn't he?" Sakurako mused as she walked back to the girls' dormitory with Negi at her side. "When you told me that, I thought you were crazy, Negi-kun ... well, a different sort of crazy than I think you are now, with your plan of yours, but never mind that now ... but he actually does care what I think. That's amazing. Isn't it?"

"It must be thrilling for you," Negi said, just a bit dryly. "It was certainly thrilling for me, having my heart nearly stop when you said that to him. I still can't believe you got away with that."

"I didn't get away with anything, I just used his exact words to ... um ... avoid telling the whole truth ... which is a totally different thing from getting away with something!"

"Ah. Of course. You really did spend a lot of formative time with Haruna, didn't you?"

She gave him a 'watch it' glance. "So anyway," she said loudly. "Update - you confessed to the mystery girl, right?"

"More or less," he replied.

"More or ... okay, fair enough," Sakurako relented after getting a variation on the glance she'd just given him. "It's Makie-chan, right?"

"... lucky guess?" he asked as he recovered from the near stumble the question had provoked.

"Only reason I don't go in for poker is I can't bluff worth a damn," she told him with a sunny smile.

"Well, regardless, things are a little complicated on that front. Let's just leave it at that, all right?" he said as they reached the door, and he held it open for her.

"I'm good with it," Sakurako said with a shrug. "So you going to go tell Asuna that you've gotten Fate to go in on this plan of yours?"

"Ah, actually ..." He trailed off as they started up the staircase.

"Actually what?"

"I haven't told her the details of the plan," he admitted.

Sakurako stopped dead in her tracks. "... well don't you kinda think you ought to?" she asked, gaping up at him from behind.

"I've decided that I'll tell her when it's time for her to take part in her role in the plan," Negi said, without looking back at her. "There's less of a chance for her to ... well, she's not as fixed on her self-sacrifice, now, but she  _could_  still sabotage the undertaking by simply refusing. The less chance of that, the better. I think."

She shook her head. "You're getting sneaky, Negi-kun," she said, and her tone made it clear that this was not a compliment.

"I know," he agreed sadly. "Maybe that's what the Grey Path means."

"The what?"

"Never mind. I can't stop you from telling her, Sakurako, but I'd genuinely appreciate it if -"

"Yeah, yeah, I understand. You're trusting me, too." A snort of unlikely laughter. "Now all I gotta do is get Kota-kun to do it, and I'll have the trifecta. G'night," she said, and turned to head off to her own room.

Negi did the same. "Tadaima," he announced as he walked in. "I do hope you stop doing that when she goes to the bathroom," he said to Konoka and Ayaka, who were hugging Asuna on either side of her while Setsuna knelt behind the three of them with her blade unsheathed on her lap.

"Nnnope," Asuna said quietly.

"Oh dear ... oh, um, hello, Kotaro-kun, Natsumi-san," he added, belatedly realizing that there were unexpected guests on the other side of the table.

"'Sup," Kotaro said, glaring at him.

"Hello, Negi-sensei," Natsumi said. "Chizuru-san asked me to tell you that hell hasn't frozen over, yet."

"Oh," Negi said, flinching at the formality in Natsumi's reference to Chizuru. "Um ... but she's moved back in."

"Yes, that's part of the reason I'm here, now," Natsumi said. "The other reason ... well, I've been discussing the other reason with Asuna-san."

"Guess whose turn it is tonight?" Asuna asked Negi with the ghost of a naughty grin. "It's your own damn fault, you know," she added to Kotaro.

"Growl," said Kotaro.

"Excuse me?" said Negi.

"You see, Negi-sensei, Kotaro-kun cheated on me with Chizuru-san - and apparently with some other people as well," Natsumi added with a sideways glance at Asuna, who just smiled faintly. "So I've decided -"

"Ah. Of course," Negi said, nodding wearily.

"... um ... can I finish my explanation, please?"

"You're going to even the score by cheating on him with me," Negi finished it for her.

Natsumi blinked a few times. "Weren't you all cutely bewildered just a few seconds ago?" she asked, just a little suspiciously.

"That was mostly feigned, I'm sad to say," he confessed. "I was sort of hoping that the universe was going to prove me wrong for once. It would have been so nice, to have that thrill of uncertainty, of - well, never mind that now." He cleared his throat. "I'm going to say a few things, now, and I'd really appreciate it if I wasn't laid on my back and/or disrobed while I was doing so."

"Oh, come on, who'd do that?" Natsumi asked, frowning skeptically.

"Makie, Yuna, the twins," Negi began to wearily recite.

"Me that one time before any of them," Konoka added cheerfully.

"Technically not me," Asuna interjected. "Oh. Well, I guess that one time does actually count."

"Man, you are 'whipped," Kotaro said disgustedly to Negi.

"Kotaro-kun, that is a disgusting phrase, don't ever use it again," Natsumi said sharply.

"Yes'm."

"... getting back to what I was saying earlier," Negi continued, taking a little tiny step back just to further reduce the chances that they could grab him if he got too involved in his speech to pay attention to his surroundings. "Natsumi-san ... revenge is a poison. I've had this made very clear to me in my dealings with the Megalomesembrian Senate. I'm fairly sure that some of the men and women I've had to deal with in the course of my work have been the ones who ordered the attack on my village. I wish I could say that I've set my anger over that aside, but I'd be lying if I did. But if I sought vengeance on them, I'd only be hurting my own cause and ultimately many other people in the process. While that situation can't really compare to yours, I hope that hearing about it will convince you to set aside your plans to settle the score and try to accept Kotaro-kun's genuine remorse over his actions instead. There. Lecture over. And I got through it without losing any clothes!" he added just a bit excitedly.

"You took off your own tie and jacket while you were talking," Setsuna pointed out.

He looked down. "So I did. How about that? Still, it's not really ... well, never mind."

"Negi-kun, you're right," Natsumi said, standing up and looking at him. "I've changed my mind. I no longer want to have crazy sex with you in order to get revenge on Kotaro-kun."

"That more than makes up for the thing with the jacket, thank y-"

"I want to have crazy sex with you because I'm horny after all the stories Asuna-san and Konoka-san and Iinchou told me."

"Right," he said, and started to undo his belt.

"Wow, just like that?" Natsumi asked, starting to undo her uniform blouse. "I thought I'd have to try and talk you into -"

Negi silently shook his head. "I don't need to be talked into anything, anymore. When I take down these pants, and you see what you're getting into, I'm not even going to bother trying to backhandedly talk you out of it by saying 'we don't have to -'" He broke off in mid-cliche, shook his head again, and went back to the business of taking down the aforementioned pants.

"Are you really going to do this right in front of us?" Ayaka asked amazedly.

"You weren't complaining this afternoon when he -" Asuna started to remind her.

"That was entirely different!"

"Well, I suppose we could go in ... um, in the shower and do it there," Negi said as he folded the pants and then started to slide down his boxers. "Out of sight, I mean."

"I like it in here," Natsumi replied quickly. "And besides, if anyone doesn't want to watch, they can just make like Kotaro-kun is now and stare at one of the far walls or - oh, I see what you mean now," she continued after she saw what was underneath the boxers. "Yes, that would probably frighten a lot of the girls. It's almost as big as yours, Kotaro-kun."

Negi froze. "Almost?" he repeated.

"Ha," said Kotaro, staring firmly at one of the far walls. "Ha. Ha. Ha."

"But I expect Negi-sensei probably knows how to use it better," she added, as she started walking towards him.

"Well, yeah," Asuna agreed.

"Hurgh," said Kotaro.

"You know," said Konoka, speculatively. "I bet we could provide poor Kotaro-kun with a much better distraction than the wall."

Setsuna blinked. When, after a moment, she realized that Natsumi was too busy sucking face with Negi and rubbing his member with her hand to reply to that, she felt obligated to do so. "Um ... Kono-chan, when you say 'we', you don't really mean 'Asuna-san and you and me', right?" she asked.

"Of course not, silly. I wouldn't leave Iinchou out like that."

"Eh?" said Ayaka, eyes wide.

"I'm so glad I didn't immediately let out a sigh of relief," Setsuna mused sadly.

"Eh?" said Ayaka, eyes wide.

Natsumi abruptly jerked back from Negi, and, without turning back, pointed behind herself in Kotaro's general direction. "Sit!" she said sharply.

"I'm sitting," Kotaro said in a placating tone.

"Good!" she said, then tilted her pointer finger to the approximate direction of the girls. "Sit!" she repeated.

"Oh, now wait a minute, Natsumi-chan, that's not fair," Konoka started to say.

"Note freckles! I'm not fair!" Natsumi snapped, turning to glare cutely at Konoka.

"Huh?"

"It's a complexion joke," Asuna explained.

"Oh."

"Anyway, sit! Kotaro-kun doesn't get to have any more fun tonight because I said so that's why!"

"It's not right!" Konoka continued to protest. "You don't own Kotaro-kun, Natsumi-chan, and just like he's letting you do what you want to do, you should do the same."

"... does that apply to me?" Setsuna asked hopefully.

"Of course not! That's entirely different!"

"You two are really similar, sometimes," Asuna observed to Ayaka as they watched this byplay.

"No we're not," Ayaka and Konoka chorused ... then blinked as they looked at each other in confusion.

Ignoring the strangled noise coming from behind her, Asuna focused on Kotaro. "Can I get a second opinion on this?" she asked, both out of genuine curiosity as to whether he saw what she did, and also to give him an extra distraction from the sounds of Natsumi kissing her way down Negi's chest to his erection.

"Well," the boy said reluctantly. "They're both pushy and always act like they know what's best for everybody else."

"I do not!" Konoka protested.

"You're a little more subtle about it than some people, Konoka, but, yes, you kind of are," Asuna told her gently. "Right, Setchan?"

"... I really don't want to take part in this conversation," Setsuna said in a tiny voice.

"Tell her how wrong she is, Setchan!" Konoka demanded.

"You are totally wrong in every way, and my saying this does not prove your point at all, Asuna-himesama."

Asuna raised an eyebrow as she looked at Konoka.

"Muuuu!" Konoka growled cutely ... in a way that conveniently covered up the low moan which escaped from Natsumi's lips as she, having pulled Negi to the floor with her, crouched over his face and felt his tongue working between her legs while her mouth moved back and forth on his phallus. Isn't that a lot better than just saying 'they went into a sixty-nine'? Much less a sexually-charged sixty-nine?

"And I'm not pushy either!" Ayaka spoke up.

"... okay, no one here is going to buy that," Asuna told her.

"Nope," Konoka agreed.

"I of course agree with Konoka-ojousama."

"I'm -"

Asuna mimed bringing up a cell phone to her ear. "Hey, Misa? It's Asuna. Aw, thanks, I'm doing great. Except the whole sleeping for a century bit, but you knew that. Anyway, I wanted to ask you, when you went and spied on Konoka and Negi shopping, why'd you do that?"

"Muuuuu!" Ayaka growled, not quite as cutely but a bit more sexily. Yes, you can growl sexily. It's totally possible.

"Yeah, and that's another thing, they're both really kinda spoiled, but in a sweet sort of way," Kotaro continued his narration. "I dunno, maybe all girls from rich families are like this."

"Nope," Asuna said firmly. "We got a good pair, here." She rolled her head back a bit to look up at Setsuna. "But just think, if the Aoyamas had dropped you off with the Yukihiro family -"

"I really don't like this counterfactual scenario," Setsuna declared nervously.

"Hmmmm," Konoka said, looking at her speculatively.

"Ahhhhh!" Natsumi said as she turned it around so that their lower regions were facing each other, drew Negi's member up into her and began rocking up and down upon him like a cowgirl. "Oh, so fucking big!" she cried.

"I think the counterfactual scenario is kind of -" Ayaka started a bit nervously.

"Okay, I've had it!" Kotaro shouted, standing up and reaching into his pants pocket. "That's all I can stands, I can't stands no more!" Out came a little bottle, which he crushed in one hand, causing its cap to fly off and a pill to shoot out of the bottle top on a ballistic arc that terminated at his mouth. With the usual poofing noise, he emerged as a fifteen year old version of himself. "We'll just see about that!"

"I said siuumph!?" Natsumi shouted, interrupted half-way through the last word by Negi kissing her soundly.

Negi suspected that what he'd done to Kotaro already could only be considered a betrayal of their friendship. Admittedly, people were not property, and so Kotaro had no legal claim on Natsumi's time or activities. But Negi had enough empathy to be able to imagine how Kotaro must be feeling right now - very much like he himself had felt when he'd learned of ... various things. (Her little brother? Gaahhhhh!)

While Negi could not undo what had been done, he could arrange matters so that if Kotaro wanted to do things instead of sitting unhappily and staring at the wall, then his friend could do so. He just hoped that Kotaro's 'things to do' list didn't include violence directed at anyone other than Negi himself. And, well, also not at Negi himself, invulnerability or not.

Kotaro's first act on assuming his adult form was to tear his pants off with a flick of his clawed fingernails.

"Well, I sure missed out earlier," Asuna said as the four of them gaped at what had been revealed.

"N-Negi-sensei's is big-bigger!" Ayaka stammered.

For a frightening moment, it looked like Kotaro was on the verge of giving Ayaka the opportunity to take a closer inspection of what was supposedly not as big as Negi, but he just clenched his teeth and turned to look at Natsumi and Negi, since their posture gave him a pretty clear look at where they were joined together. He lifted his gaze a minute fraction. "Okay," he said, and started stomping towards the two of them.

"Kota-" Natsumi managed to gasp out as he arrived.

"Right, here we go," he said, then spat on the palms of his hands, rubbed them together momentarily, and brought them down to his crotch.

"Uh, what are you -" Negi started to ask.

"Kotaro, no! I didn't douche before we came here!" Natsumi cried out. "It's going to be -"

"Whatever," he said, then grabbed her crouched form by the hips and proceeded to bugger her.

"Nyaahhhhh!"

"Ghghhhhhh!"

"Wow," said Asuna, somewhat drowned out by Negi and Natsumi's synchronized moans. "I seriously missed out. The two of you're doing that to me, next!" she added, raising her voice a bit.

"Really, Asuna-san!" Ayaka gasped.

"Right, sorry, let's give them some space ... and talk about the counterfactual scenario where Setsuna's  _your_  playmate turned bodyguard with a crush instead of Konoka's playmate turned bodyguard with a crush."

By the time that Negi groaned and released his orgasm up into Natsumi's vulva, the sensation of which could be felt through the thin membrane separating his member from Kotaro's, thus triggering Kotaro's release as well, Setsuna was busily going down on Ayaka to the depraved amusement of Konoka and Asuna. Natsumi might have found that funny if she wasn't semi-comatose from all the orgasms she'd had in the process ...

* * *

And the night went on.

 _And on, and on,_  Negi thought, early the next morning, as he pounded Natsumi against the back wall of the shower stall, water raining down on them both as her ankles crossed behind his back. Considering that she'd passed out almost immediately after their encounter last night, and stayed passed out throughout the rest of the festivities, she was showing remarkable endurance. Whatever else she might be, she was certainly a trouper.

Of course, it was possible that she'd actually recovered a bit more quickly and simply feigned unconsciousness to avoid having to watch Kotaro and Negi giving Asuna what she'd asked for. And then giving the same thing to Ayaka, once she'd insisted that anything Asuna could go through, she could endure. And then Konoka ... well, Konoka had actually backed out when it became clear that she really wasn't ready to do anal after all, and so she'd just done Kotaro while Negi did Setsuna.

That had finally worn them all out, and they'd rested for a while. In the morning, he'd decided to take a shower before he went out to try and complete Phase Three, requiring - as Fate had guessed - a trip to visit Captain Tatsumiya, and then another one to contact Zazie-san. Natsumi's self-invitation to join him in the shower had been a welcome one. Negi entertained vague notions that, if he got enough of this sort of thing out of the way before he saw either of them, he could reduce the chances that he'd engage in this sort of thing  _after_  he saw either of them.

He was well aware that this was bound to fail, but he had to try something.

Distraction from these somewhat depressing thoughts came in a flash as he orgasmed up into the condom Natsumi had carried in her teeth when she came naked into the bathroom. He was a bit bewildered by her insistence on using it this time, after the previous night's revels, but he'd agreed to use it all the same. He sighed in release ... then blinked in horror at his own selfishness. "Oh, uh, did, did you -" he started to ask.

"Uh-huh," Natsumi said with a blissful smile. "Over and over and over again."

"Oh, good," he said, easing her thighs off of his hips as he withdrew from her. "I'm glad. I truly am, and - uh?"

She pushed him the rest of the way out of her, then reached down with her hand to pull the condom off of his member, quickly bringing it to her lips. "Mmmm," she sighed as it went in her mouth. "Don't tell Kota, but you  _can_  use it better than him, and your stuff tastes better, too."

"... I can definitely promise that the subject will never come up in casual conversation," he assured her.

"Well, good. Um. You're gonna save Asuna, right?" she asked, sounding more nervous than she had a few moments earlier.

"I'll do all I can. I thought you didn't like her, though," he added with a mild version of the teasing tone he sometimes used on Setsuna.

She proceeded to demonstrate that she wasn't Setsuna by giving him a mild smack to the side of his head. "Not wanting to have sex with someone doesn't mean you don't like them," she said, not really angry but a little annoyed. "I told you all, I don't go for that. Chizu-ne and Iinchou can do whatever the heck they want, but I'm not - why are you smiling?"

"'Chizu-ne'?" he repeated.

Eyeroll. Whap! "I know perfectly well that I'll forgive her eventually," she said. "Anyway. Let's go rescue poor Setsuna-san from whatever Konoka-san's making her and Kota do."

"Let's," he agreed.

"Ahhhh!" came a loud voice through the bathroom walls. "Setchan, why does Kotaro-kun get the wings when  _I_  don't?"

"Or we could wait a while, use up more hot water ..."

* * *

As he climbed the stairway leading up to the Tatsumiya shrine, Negi silently reviewed what he planned to say to Captain Tatsumiya. It was probably pointless. This was, if anything, the part of the procedure that he expected to be relatively easy ... almost ironically so, given how crucial it was. The financial infrastructure to what he was planning, which he'd put into place through consultation with Ayaka, would be useless without competent oversight. And there could be no more competent oversight than this woman.

"Negi-kun," said a voice from the top of the stairs, drawing him from his reverie.

He looked up to see her standing there, in her miko outfit. "Oh," he said. "Did ... someone call ahead to let you know that I was coming?"

"I did receive a rather confusing phone call from a certain class representative," Mana confirmed as he climbed up the stairs to stand before her. "I hope the forthcoming explanation is a bit more coherent."

"I'll certainly try," he said sheepishly.

"Well, good. Come in, there's tea and cookies waiting for you, unless Zazie's eaten them all."

He paused again. "Zazie-san is here? Did Ayaka call her, too?"

"No, she claimed that it was Sakurako-san who told her to come over here," Mana said, not blinking an eye at the odd familiarity as she led Negi across the courtyard to the shrine's building. "I look forward to an explanation for that, too."

"Ah. Well, to make a long story short, she was present when I described matters to Fate, and ... well, here we are."

"That is certainly a short story," she said as she slid open the door.

"I'm not that much of a glutton," Zazie said quietly as she sat on the far side of the table. She did, however, have a half-eaten cookie in one hand.

"Sure you're not," Mana said as she went over to sit down across from her. "Well, Negi-kun? The floor's yours."

Negi took a deep breath, and once more explained the details of his plan, with a focus on the phase of it that they would - hypothetically - be responsible. He was pleased that neither of them reacted in the way that Ayaka and Sakurako had. Their composure was a necessary feature, after all.

But they were silent once he'd finished.

"Sensei," Zazie said, very quietly. "This is an extraordinarily risky plan. I'm sure that you realize that. I believe that my sister would be in hysterics, now, if it were explained to her, and she is not one given to the same excesses of emotion that I am."

"Really? Hysterics?" he asked.

"She's given to different ones," Mana interjected. "Keeps showing up every week to ask me to reconsider my refusal of her job offer. Has she always had problems taking no for an answer?"

"It is not a word that we generally encounter," Zazie admitted. "However, that does not presently pertain. Negi-sensei ... you awe me with your audacity. I will do everything in my power to fulfill the role you envision for me."

"Thank you, Zazie-san," Negi said with relief. "And, Captain -"

"No," said Mana.

"No?" repeated Zazie, a faint note of surprise in her voice.

"By any chance," Negi asked in a tone which suggested he was just this side of panic, "are you trying to acclimate Zazie-san to the sound of that word, with which she has, by her own admission, heretofore been less than familiar?"

"No," Mana said, this time shaking her head for emphasis.

"You won't do it," he said.

"No. I won't do it."

"May I ask why not?" asked Negi. From the look on his face, he had several things he wanted to ask her besides that.

From the look on  _her_  face, Mana was holding back from flatly replying that he could and should ask just that. "I won't help you with this plan because it is insane, Negi-kun. It is dangerous beyond imagination, and likely to fail and wreak havoc. I don't believe in what you're describing."

"It has worked in the past," Negi interjected. "You've seen it yourself."

"The circumstances of that were different, Negi-kun. This is not that, nor could it be. I understand your desperation, but this ... boys and girls should be ambitious, but this is megalomania, not ambition. You're risking countless lives ..." She trailed off, then shook her head. "No. I'm not going to go over that again. Because, ultimately, it's not the key issue here. There's another reason that I'm refusing, a more fundamental one."

"And what might that be?" Zazie asked quietly.

"You are an idealist, Zazie," she said. "So, however different her ideals might be, is your sister. So are you, Negi-kun. But I am not. I am a pragmatist, and a mercenary. I do what I do because I expect to be rewarded in some manner. I can overlook the insanity of a plan, if the rewards are good enough, and I arrange to receive them in advance - in which case I will do all that I can to make the insanity workable, while arranging for my own survival.

"But this? No. There is no reward in this world which could make me go along with this plan. There is nothing you can give me, or promise me, to make me consider this. It is that insane. In a way, you have my respect, because I honestly thought that there was nothing anyone could come up with that would make me back away from the table before I even heard about payment, but I suspect that my respect is very cold comfort."

"You're right," Negi said numbly. "I can't ... there's nothing -"

"Nothing in the world. In any world. No amount of money would allow me to live with myself if the plan failed. Frankly, no amount of money would allow me to live, period, because I suspect that, if the plan failed, everyone involved would be hunted down like dogs." She let out a long sigh. "I'm truly sorry, Negi-kun, because I want to help you. But there's nothing in it for me, and I need more than that."

"Oh what a rogue and peasant slave art thou," said a voice from underneath the table. From its fourth side, where no one was presently seated, Kaede abruptly slid out and into sight, then assumed a seated posture there, gazing mockingly at Mana as she did.

"I assume that someone called you and told you about this meeting, as well?" Mana asked, sounding annoyed.

"Konoka-dono phoned me after hearing Iinchou-dono on the phone to yourself," Kaede confirmed patiently. "She believed that my humble self might be helpful should you descend into nonsense and tomfoolery."

"Excuse me?"

"One was unaware you had become hard of hearing as well as hard of heart," Kaede continued. "One will essay to speak more clearly. Nonsense and tomfoolery," she repeated, just a bit loudly.

"I can hear you perfectly well," Mana bit out. "What do you mean, nonsense and tomfoolery?"

"Telling this poor, dear boy that there is nothing he can give you, nothing that you would wish for more than anything else in the world, when we are all well aware that there is a thing you desire just that much," Kaede said mockingly.

"We are?" Negi quietly asked Zazie.

The demon princess shrugged.

"Oh are we?" Mana asked. "And what, pray, would that be, oh sage?"

Kaede rose from her seat, and leaned forward, across the table, staring into Mana's eyes. Mana, in her turn, rose up and also leaned forward, so that no more than a few centimeters separated them.

"I do hope you're not about to suggest that what I want is you. Either sexually or to prove once and for all who is better," Mana said. "Neither of those things appeals to me."

"Liar again," Kaede said, smirking. "But no, that's not what I'm talking about. What do you want more than anything else? What do you want that Negi is certainly qualified to give you? The answer is obvious.

"A child."

Mana remained in her position, staring at Kaede in utter silence for what felt like a full minute, before she stood straight up, nodded to herself, and lowered into a seated posture once more. "I see," she said as she picked up her teacup.

"And what dost thou see?" Kaede asked, antiquated speech at maximum.

She seemed to ignore her as she turned to smile warmly at a shocked-looking Negi. "I'm sorry, Negi-kun. I shouldn't have called you names."

"Uhhhokay?" he replied.

"Yes, that was wrong of me," she said with a nod. Taking a sip from her cup, she continued. "It's not your fault that you've become a megalomaniac. It was probably inevitable given the rampant insanity that clearly afflicts your closest companions."

"I ... can't really argue with that, but -" Negi started to say.

"I am not crazy," Kaede stated, as she stepped up onto the table, light as a feather but nowhere nearly as soft as she walked barefoot across its surface to stand in front of Mana, who finally turned her face to look up at her.

"Crazy people always assert that, don't they?" Mana asked, perhaps of Zazie.

"It's not a particularly useful diagnostic," Zazie chose to reply.

"And serves only as refusal to engage in the argument, which in its turn suggests that the argument doth bite shrewdly."

"You can't use that expression with that noun," Mana said crossly. "If you're going to butcher the language -"

"Excuse me, Cap- Tatsumiya-san," Negi interjected. "I just ... is there any truth to what Kaede is saying?"

"No, I have no idea where she would get this bizarre notion -"

"Mana Arcana," Kaede interrupted.

Mana went silent for a moment, it broken by the sound of her fingers clenching tightly around the teacup. "I suppose it would do no good to ask how you happened to learn that name?" she asked quietly.

"Nin nin," Kaede replied, mockingly, before continuing. "Daughter of a demon and a refugee, orphaned and abandoned in the moment of her birth, raised in the Mahora orphanage and yet never truly home there. Taken under the wing of an adventuring mage from this area, one of many who sought to do great deeds in imitation of -" Here she paused, eyes flickered towards Negi. "- a certain person," she continued after the pause. "After his journeys reached their end, adopted by her magister's family and taking their name. Driven to continue his works left undone, and the covert benefactor of the orphanage where she was raised. Yet always believing that there is more that she can do, and referring to these charitable deeds as a sop to her conscience. Aware that the children there need more help than she can ever give -"

"Enough," Mana snapped.

Kaede knelt down, nearly crouching on the edge of the table before her. "Dost accept that thou art known?" she asked quietly.

"I could easily do the same thing about you," Mana replied. "What in all of that would lead you to think -"

"More help than she can ever give," Kaede repeated, far more softly. "And so, in the privacy of her heart, she imagines what it would be like to have a child of her own, whom she would protect and guide as she was protected and guided, who would grow in a world of love and hope instead of fear and doubt, paying forward the debts that she owes and can never pay back."

"The world - regardless of the emotions which invest it - is a dangerous place," Mana said after a moment.

"Nor shall it grow less so as time passes," the ninja agreed. "But opportunities do not always come more than once in a lifetime."

"She is not wrong about that," Zazie interjected.

"No," Mana said again. "No, she is not. Well?" she said, turning to look at Negi. "What have you to say, teacher?"

"I'm honestly not sure what I'm supposed to say to any of this," Negi admitted, then flinched as the two young women gave him a synchronized annoyed look, Kaede even opening her eyes slightly to do so. "Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not sure. Would you like me to lie about my deepest personal feelings?"

"Yes," they chorused.

"It would simplify matters," Zazie agreed as she sat naked on the other side of the table.

"No, I don't think it where did your clothes go?" he asked.

"I sneezed very quietly while you were focused on their conversation," she explained.

"Oh."

"See? Simplified."

Negi opened his mouth to reply to that, apparently thought better of it, and chose to adopt a more defensive position. "Okay, so, everyone else here is clearly aware that I have ...  _been_  with a number of your classmates," he started to say.

"'A number of' them?" Mana asked with raised eyebrow. "Underselling yourself a bit, aren't you?"

"Indeed, your frigid and unwelcoming self is one of the last five holdouts," Kaede elected to inform her.

"Yes, I am aware," Zazie confirmed with a polite nod. "I may not speak much, but I hear  _everything._ " In particular, she'd heard a certain quartet of girls getting busy in the bathroom some time ago. Deducing the rest had been rather simple.

"'Frigid and unwelcoming'?" Mana asked with two raised eyebrows.

"One simply calls them as one sees them."

"Ahem!" Negi rasped. "I should here interject that ... uh ... I am not myself certain that I can provide the service that Kaede suggests. I don't know if the altered form has changed me that much, and if my, um, pre-existing condition will allow it. Understandably, the medical tests that I've had done haven't really focused on that aspect of my situation. However, the tests involved would take some time, and this is not something we can afford -"

Zazie rose up, launched herself across the table, and pounced on Negi, kissing him firmly as she bore him to the ground.

"Nguh?" he asked with her tongue in his mouth - a tongue which, he was not terribly surprised to realize, was literally able to reach his tonsils at full extension.

Momentarily, Zazie released him, and pulled back to glance over her shoulder at Mana and Kaede. "Fertile," she reported shortly, and then resumed kissing while starting to undress him.

"I see," Mana said. "Well. I suppose we have an agreement, then."

"Indeed. Shall we entertain ourselves while they -"

K-LICK went the safety on Mana's pistol as it came out of her robes' long sleeve.

"Or we could just watch."

Ordinarily, Negi would probably be somewhat concerned about the newest development in what was already a confusing and frightening time in his life, and its implications for recent events. However, Zazie was a considerable distraction from such concerns, with the way that she kissed him like the hungry demon that, you know, she actually was. He found just enough psychic space to be concerned that her talon-like hands were about to tear his clothes apart, but she proved as deft as she was agile, and they were removed with neither damage nor delay - and her hands, happily, reverted to fingers as they wrapped around his member and began stroking it the rest of the way to erection.

"I ... didn't know ... that you ..." he started to say when she paused kissing his mouth long enough to allow her to tongue one of his nipples.

She smiled at him, almost catlike. "Almost all the girls in class are united in this. Why would I choose to be different?" she asked.

"Oh," he said, feeling strangely disappointed. "Then -"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I do not love you." She paused, looked reflective. "I do not know if I  _can_  love, as you and yours do," Zazie admitted. "It may be that my kind is not meant for that. But know, Negi Springfield, that I do not bestow my favors on those who do not already possess my regard, my respect and the heat of my desire." This said, she slid down his chest to lick at his erection, caressing it with tongue and then sharp teeth before she smiled wickedly up at him again. "Though it seems I do bestow them on those who forget to attend the circuses to which I nicely invite them," she added, then began sucking him in earnest.

"Ahhhhhhh," he replied. "Sss-aahhhhh-rrrry."

"Her technique is quite advanced," Kaede noted as she watched from atop the table.

"Uh-huh," said Mana, who was busily clearing said table.

"One has much to learn from her."

"Good for you."

"Are you seriously bent on such matters at a time like this?" Kaede asked, finally turning to regard her rival with amazement.

"Are you seriously going to engage in color commentary?" Mana asked as she poured what was left of the tea into a thermos.

"Since this appears to be my role -"

"Swell. My role is the caretaker of this shrine. So I'll do that before I get down to rocking his world, if you don't mind."

"Sh-shouldn't I -" Negi started to ask as, having apparently had enough of fellatio, Zazie let his shaft slide out of her mouth, then smiled up at him, once more cat-like, then likewise crawled up to bring her face up to his face.

"No, but your offer is honored," she whispered. "The point of foreplay is to create arousal, and all the arousal I could wish for is already created. Thus -" She reached down, grabbed hold of him, and pulled him towards and into her with a hiss of satisfaction. After a moment to adjust to their union, she began rocking back and forth in the motions as old as time.

"... and so all through the night it was honor and offer," Mana sang quietly as she finished cleaning up.

Neither of them heard her. "Ah, yes," Zazie sighed. "But harder, harder! Claim me as your own -"

"Alas, he has been reluctant to do that," Kaede reported, as she watched them, one hand going down between her legs.

Before the hand could reach its destination, though, Negi seized her and rolled them over so that he was mounted atop her, Zazie's back against the hardwood floor, her legs wrapped under his arms.

"... until lately, it seems," Kaede added, faintly amazed.

"Ahhhh!" she cried - yet strangely softly, without much volume. "Take me! Take me and  _kiss_  me!"

He did so as he pounded down into her.

"Ah, your lips are like fire on mine," she gasped once the kiss was done. "And yet I find that I yearn for something more tart. If only there were another willing to lend me their  _other_  lips."

"One is fairly sure she is speaking of  _one_ ," Mana snarked as she picked up the tray of goodies and stood to take it out of the room.

Kaede blinked. "Oh," she said. "Well, then. Far be it from one to deny another's yearning ..." With that, she skinned down the trousers of her ninja costume, then rolled to kneel on either side of Zazie's face. The cunnilingus began at once, as she bent down to clam Negi's lips once more.

"Back in a moment," Mana said, fairly sure that no one was listening, before she slid the door closed.

She stood there, holding the tray, breathing heavily ... then, in utter silence, set it down on the floor beside the door, and slid the door open just a notch so that she could see.

"I do not go that way," she reminded herself, as she began masturbating to the sight of Negi's firm buttocks and the way that they moved, certainly not to the sight of Kaede's breasts as her tunic came off as well.

Negi found it a bit startling to realize that he was actually having a good time. Zazie's statement that she did not (and perhaps could not) love him blended with his understanding that his relationship with Kaede was more or less purely physical. In combination, he was able to find his own pleasure in giving them pleasure, without needing to worry so much about the more complicated emotions he inspired in (and felt for) the others. So they writhed against each other in ways that were genuinely unfamiliar to Negi even after all that he'd been through recently, and the novelty of it all was also part of the pleasure of it.

Too soon, then, as he lay atop the table with the two of them wrapped around him, Zazie's motions drew to a halt. "Enough," she said. "Any more and there will be none left for her."

"Ah?" said Negi. "Um ... a-actually, I don't want to brag, but ... I've been told that I can go for -"

"Good," she said approvingly. "You'll need all of that."

"Of course, that's assuming," Kaede said, interrupting her licking at Negi's rear, "that she who would require all of that has not in fact fled for the hills."

Zazie twitched her toes, and a small, hobgoblin-like creature arose from her shadow, cast against the far wall of the room. In perfect silence, it dashed across the floor to the door, and slid it open ... exposing Mana, the skirts of her outfit hiked up as she stood, bent over, as one peeping through a crack might stand, with her hands down between her legs.

"Tsk tsk!" tsked Kaede, after a moment of silence. "Such a shameful way to treat one's robes of office. As expected of Mana-san!"

"Didn't you  _just_  say -" Negi started to ask.

"Bite bite bite," Kaede replied quietly, eying his ass.

"Ahem," said Mana as she abruptly straightened. "Well, then," she added as she came into the room. "I suppose that we should get on with it." She rather peremptorily gestured for Zazie and Kaede to get off the table. Zazie quietly did as she was beckoned.

"Um," said Negi, his earlier high spirits somewhat dampened by Mana's apparent embarrassment. "Captain, I -"

"Negi," she said, dropping the honorifics, as she glared at Kaede, who met her gaze with a pleasant smile and absolutely no signs of going anywhere. "I believe that it will be somewhat awkward if you begin shrieking 'Oh Captain' at your moment of transport."

"What if I follow it up with 'My captain'?" he asked in a vague attempt to lighten the mood a little.

She glanced at him somewhat witheringly, then returned her look to Kaede and gestured for her to depart once more. "You may refer to me as Mana, if you please."

"Oh, well, um, in that case ... um ... Mana," he said, then added, with more sincerity than he had lately used in saying these words. "We don't have to do anything if you don't want. I ... I can explore other options, if you'd rather not -"

"Move," she growled.

"Where?" Negi peeped.

"Not  _you_."

"Why, I shall certainly do so," said Kaede whimsically as she rose up and got off the table. "I simply awaited a polite request."

Mana looked as though she wanted to answer that, but she shook her head and looked down at Negi as she began to undo the belt of her outfit. "Negi," she said again. "I do in fact ... desire this. Have no question about that. These are not the circumstances that I ever envisioned this happening, but, nonetheless ..." And now her lips quirked faintly, in what might almost have been a smile. "I could not imagine a better father for my child."

The skirt of her outfit dropped to the floor, and the blouse came off a moment later.

In less time than it would take to describe it, given how verbose the description of how very good Mana looked with no clothes on would probably be in order to appeal to certain people, she was on him, kissing him ferociously and clenching him tightly to her. "On top of me," she hissed between kisses, rolling onto her back. "Better ... for conception."

"Really?" Negi asked, skeptically, and pulling back completely.

"How should I know?" Mana growled, eyes going demonic. "It's not like I've ever sought this out!"

"Just checking," he peeped. "Um ... right." He grabbed hold of her knees, pulling them up to spread her as widely as possible, easily done given her flexibility. Without further hesitation, he pushed up and into her, trying to get as deeply in as possible. As he'd mostly paid attention to satisfying his partner's emotional needs in the past, the physics (technically, the biology) of it hadn't greatly concerned him, and so he wasn't completely sure if he was doing it right.

"Nn-hn," Mana said, to be charitable to the noise that she made.

"Is that right?" he asked.

"Yessss," she answered, teeth rather pointy at the moment. "Now get moving."

"Right," he said ... and got moving.

Off to the side, Zazie and Kaede were watching this, and the demon princess was not, for once, the one showing little emotion. So it was impossible to say for sure what prompted Zazie to quietly remark, "Jealousy is an awful thing."

"Says the demoness," Kaede replied without a glance in Zazie's direction.

Zazie shrugged. "We are the people who know awful things better than anyone."

"And what would you prescribe as a remedy for this one?"

"Remedies are not part of our special knowledge," Zazie admitted. "Distractions are more of our way. Would you like me to distract you?"

"FUCKING YES!"

Kaede shook her head at Mana's mistimed exclamation. "I appreciate the offer, but ... to distract one from what one most desires, one should have the opposite, should one not? And the opposite is in somewhat short supply."

"Ah," Zazie replied. "But there are other possibilities. We mazoku have our secret ways, which we have shared with ... adventurous mages, from time to time. And so -" She reached down between her legs, made a gesture ... and her clitoris began to swell up.

Kaede watched with fascination as it took on a length which was not quite equal to the size of Negi's negi, but still not to be sneered at. "One has heard of such things," she breathed.

"Well?"

With only slight hesitation Kaede bent to begin sucking and licking at the erection.

Elsewhere, Negi gasped in release as he ejaculated deeply into Mana. "I believe ... that should ..."

"Let us make certain," she said, holding him in place. "Keep going."

So he did, continuing to pound her into the top of the table, doing his best to focus on her and not the strange noises that were being made across the room as Zazie and Kaede moved on to other uses of a swollen phallus-like member. It was fairly easy to do, as the momentary panic he felt when the legs of the table finally gave out under the strain and they found themselves momentarily falling to the floor was quite diverting.

Then too, there was the way that Mana had started screaming even before that. "YES!" she shrieked. "THAT'S IT! YES YES YESSS!"

"I'm - I'm about to -" he saw fit to inform her.

"HURRY UP AND DO IT THEN! GIVE ME YOUR BABY BATTER!"

 _Baby batter?_  Negi dearly hoped that there were no visitors to the shrine at the moment, as there was no way that anyone within a hundred meters or so could not know what was going on in this room, walls or not. He supposed that he should have cast a sound suppressing spell, but since it was difficult to remember to do that in his own room, doing it here had proven impossible.

"HURRRRRRY!" she cried.

 _Wait,_  he thought.  _She's ... crying?_

Yes, tears were indeed streaming down Mana's cheeks from her tightly clenched eyes. Were they tears of bliss or agony? He could not tell, her face revealed nothing, and so he bent to try and whisper into her ear - only to feel himself finally release his second load of what she had termed and he could now no longer not think of as 'baby batter'. Flinching, Negi prepared to hear and feel the sound of a shriek unlike any to this point.

When the sound of her voice came again, however, it came as a whisper of a name.

Unfortunately, it was not Negi's name. Nor was it any name with which he was familiar. He had a hunch that he knew whose name it was, however.

"Oh," he said.

After a moment, Mana had recovered enough, and had enough self-awareness, to murmur, "I'm sorry."

"It's all right," he assured her.

"Don't," she said, no less softly. "Don't ever say it's all right when it's not. You have that right."

"All right," he said, neither conceding the point nor confirming her claim. "Perhaps, some day, you'll tell me about him, and -"

"No," she answered firmly.

"All right," he said again.

They lay there, breathing heavily, and listening to the sounds of Zazie fucking Kaede in a rather painful looking position.

"Are you afraid?" he asked out of nowhere.

"Beyond measure," she admitted. "You?"

"... I don't know if I can be a better father than mine," he said. "And please do not say that doing so will not be hard, as I care about you a great deal."

"Wouldn't dream of it," she told him, and kissed his cheek. "I don't know if I can be a better mother than mine, either. But we have to try."

"Yes," he agreed. "And ..."

When she realized he wasn't going to say it, she finished for him. "And I will watch over the program for as long as I can."

"Thank you," Negi whispered.

"Ah, yes, fuck me hard, you futa wench!" shrieked Kaede, because there hadn't been nearly enough dirty talk so far.

* * *

Of course, just to make absolutely sure and certainly not because she enjoyed it, no not at all, Mana had Negi do her twice more, varying the positioning a bit these times since there were supposedly a few other ways to enhance the probability of successful fertilization, and, again, certainly not because she had a particular liking of getting banged from behind. Not at all! (Negi was beginning to suspect that there might be just a few too many women in his life who had tsundere aspects to their personality.) And then Kaede had wanted to have another go, experimenting a bit, and Negi found out what it was like to engage in double vaginal penetration alongside Zazie's member, and various other things had happened.

By the time he left the shrine, walking just a bit unsteadily beside Zazie, it was early afternoon. He wasn't sure where Kaede had gone. She'd disappeared like the wind after giving him one last deep kiss while he was recovering from the last bout, before Mana had delicately suggested it was time for her guests to leave.

Not until he passed under the shrine's gate did the exact nature of what had just transpire truly hit him, making him stop dead in his tracks. "What have I done?" he asked.

"... I assume that the literal answer is not what you are seeking," Zazie asked.

He didn't really listen. "In the name of this project, I have ... I knew that I would have to do things, make compromises that would trouble my conscience, but ... to create a child simply as part of a strategy to advance my agenda ... I am a monster. I am more of a monster than Evangeline could ever hope to be. I am the lowest of the -"

"Negi-kun," Zazie interrupted the torrent of self-recrimination. "Do you recall what I said about lies that simplify matters?"

"- a base and disgusting -"

"There are explicit lies, and then there are implicit lies," she continued.

"- beyond all moral and ethical -"

"One such implicit lie would be the notion that I can detect someone's fertility by kissing them."

 _That_  got him to stop. "... what?" he asked after a moment.

"You may be," she explained. "You may not be. I have no way of knowing. I would suggest that you seek out actual medical testing if you have concerns on the subject."

"But ... but Zazie!" he protested. "If, if I'm not, then what's going to happen when Mana finds out that she's not -"

"Well, it's not like she can kill you," the demon girl said with a shrug. "And she is probably mature enough to put the blame where it belongs - on me, in other words. Which will have the additional effect of hardening her heart further against my sister's entreaties, which will hopefully give Poyo a valuable lesson in accepting limitations. Ideally not a fatal one, but so it goes. Demon," she added, by way of reminder, in response to his aghast look.

"I'm not sure if going along with this makes me more of a monster or less," Negi said, hands over his face. "I -"

Whatever else he might have said was lost forever as his phone rang. Fishing it out of his pants pocket, he answered it. "Negi here. What -" he asked. "Fate, what are you talking about?  _What?_  Yes, yes, I do, I will be right there." He hung up. "There's ... I've got to go," he said at last.

"Be well," Zazie said, waving regally.

With a shake of his head, Negi dashed off.

She watched him go, thinking of lies implicit and explicit, thinking of the day he'd walked into their classroom and her life had changed forever. Thinking of him.

She suspected that she was going to be doing that a lot in the years to come.

* * *

As she spilled the basin of water over her naked body to begin the ceremony of purification, Mana closed her eyes in annoyance. "You are nearly as unable to take no for an answer as Poyo, you know that?" she said as she set the basin down and reached for the pistol she kept in the tray of bath essentials.

"I did not come to press you further," Kaede interjected from behind her. "But one did take the liberty of securing the pistol before allowing you to sense one's presence."

Mana made a disgusted noise and turned to face her eternal rival. "All right, then, what did you come here to do?" she asked.

Kaede was fully dressed in her ninja jumpsuit, and her expression was faintly penitent, or so it seemed to Mana. "I have come to offer you my word of honor. This Nagase Kaede, Koga Ninja Chuunin, will not trouble you during the duration of your pregnancy, and will strive to see that no others do so as well, on my sacred -"

"I'm not pregnant," Mana interrupted.

Kaede's eyes opened fully. "You can tell so soon?" she asked, amazed.

"No, baka," she replied disgustedly. "It would be more accurate to say that I have no idea if I'm pregnant or not, but considering that Zazie was lying about Negi being fertile, I suspect what he had to say about his condition actually applies. So there's a better than pretty good chance that I'm not."

"... she was lying? How do you -"

"I keep my ears open," Mana snapped. "If mazoku, even pureblood royal mazoku, could do that ... thing she pretended she was doing, I'd have heard about it by now. It's not a trick that they'd bother to hide."

Distress began to show on Kaede's face. "Then ... what are you going to do?"

"Exactly what I said I'd do. I'm still going to play the role he set out for me." She made a face at the face Kaede was making. "Don't look so shocked. If he was willing to go to such extremes for the sake of this thing, I suppose the situation really is such that he's going to need my help. So I'll figure out some way to get appropriate compensation from the two of them later, for trying to trick me, and do my 'make this insane plan work' thing."

Kaede was openly staring.

"What?" Mana asked sourly.

"You  _like_  him," Kaede said gleefully.

"... what are you, twelve?"

"You're sweet on him!"

"I am not. I am -"

"You're changing," Kaede concluded, smiling broadly.

Mana didn't say anything to that, just glowering at her instead.

Kaede nodded. "You're changing. Someday, you'll change your mind about other things, too. And when we fuck, as fuck we surely will, the fucking will be the most fucking amazing fucking either of us has ever fucking known."

"... if you're going to abandon that ridiculous old-fashioned dialect, could you at least try not to sound like you're from New Jersey instead?" Mana asked wearily.

* * *

This close to the World Tree, the sickness was obvious even to someone as unlearned in botany as Negi. He almost flinched at the sight of it. Was his plan really going to come in time to save the tree? It looked -

"It is not as bad as it looks," the Headmaster assured him, following Negi's gaze. "If it was truly on its last legs, they wouldn't be able to do this. But I do hope, Negi-kun, that your plan is  _almost_  ready."

Sensing Fate's eyes on him - for his ally had been invited to  _this_  assembly of Mahora's magical faculty, held at the tree's base - Negi nodded. "I just have one more step that I'll need to take before I'm ready to implement, sir. And I plan to do that as soon as we're done here."

"Good, good," the old man said, nodding. "Do I even want to know?"

"No," he told him honestly. Considering the reactions he generally got when describing it, he feared for the Headmaster's heart.

"Didn't think so. Ah, here it comes," Konoemon observed as the glowing surrounding them began to become almost blinding ...

... and then there were quite a few more people on the hill. Most were armored knights of the type with which Negi had become quite familiar during his sojourn in the Magical World, but at their forefront was a tall, blonde woman with delicate horns, dressed in an elaborate costume that resembled a long coat over a swimsuit.

"Theodora Basileia Helladis de Vesperisszimia," Konoemon declared. "Little did I dream that our humble academy would be so fortunate as to receive such an exalted guest. Be welcome."

"We thank you, Konoe Konoemon-dono, for your exquisite hospitality," the Princess replied, inclining her head. "We regret only that this time of great trouble and hardship had to come to pass before we could aaaaaah can't keep this up," she concluded flatly.

"Eh?" Konoemon said.

Poof.

Just as abruptly as she and the knights had appeared, the Princess disappeared, to be replaced by a much shorter young lady in an Ariadne school uniform looking exceptionally stressed. "It's really hard, maintaining the appearance of someone so much taller than I am," the girl complained, then flushed. "Um. Hello, Negi-san. Hello, Fate-san."

"... Shiori?" Negi and Fate chorused.

**To Be Continued**


	16. Satsuki, Misora, Fate/Sakurako, Fate/Shiori

"I have to say, this isn't even remotely how I pictured our reunion going," Shiori said as she considered the cell walls from where she was seated at the table.

"It's just a formality, Shiori-san," Negi assured her from the other side of the table. "You're not in any trouble. Yet," he added in a fit of honesty. "And of course you won't be, even after this," he added quickly once the fit passed, and he saw her growing more apprehensive - difficult as that was to imagine. "They just want to confirm that you really were sent here as Princess Theodora's representative, rather than - oh, hypothetically, ambushing her in an alley and stealing her appearance, ahaha."

"That's really sort of creepy laughter, Negi-san," Shiori told him. "And I wouldn't do that. Again," she added in a parallel fit of honesty.

"I know, I'm sorry, I was just trying to lighten the ... never mind," he said wearily.

"Once the knights who accompanied you are able to contact the Princess and she explains why she had you take her place without even informing her bodyguards, I'm sure that their demands for your immediate arrest will be revoked," Fate said from where he was holding up the cell wall with his back. As the first words he'd said to her, other than an slightly astonished utterance of her name, she thought that they rather lacked something.

"It's not that hard to understand. There was a problem with Theo's artificial body, so she couldn't come herself, and so she asked me to take care of it for her, and -"

"Wait," interrupted Fate. " _Theo_?"

"Yes, that's a thing she does, she asks people to call her that," Negi explained.

"... she's never asked me to call her that."

Negi turned to look at him with a good imitation of Fate's usual non-expression on his face.

"No, really, she hasn't."

"Goodness, Fate, I'm really surprised by that. I guess she might still hold that 'apparently trying to kill her, her family and her nation' thing against you," he told him. "I can't understand why she would, but that's how it is."

"Ah. Well, she is somewhat incomprehensible, so -"

"That was sarcasm, Fate."

"Ah," Fate repeated, in fuller understanding.

Negi turned back to look at Shiori with a 'what can you do' expression. He was somewhat startled to see an eager look on the girl's face. "It's so nice to see the two of you have become such good friends," Shiori almost cooed.

It occurred to Negi that, when last he'd seen her, Shiori had been spending a fair amount of time chatting with Haruna at the party, and he suddenly developed the awareness that terrible things might possibly have developed from that. "Um," he said. "Well, anyway, nothing bad is going to happen to you while you're waiting here."

The door to the cell slammed open.

" _Why_  did you say that?" Fate asked as he saw who it was.

"It was a weak moment," Negi admitted as he turned to look.

"Is that her?" Sakurako asked excitedly as she peered through the open doorway. "Hi! Excuse me, but are you Shiori?"

Shiori blinked. "Uh ... yes, that's the name that I -"

Sakurako rushed in to stand in front of the table, beside Negi, grinning widely and extending her hands - then pausing. "Oh, geez, I'm sorry, it's just that you look so Western I sort of jumped to the conclusion that you shake hands like a Westerner would so I tried to shake your hands instead of bowing first like a normal person would and now I've probably hurt your feelings without meaning to and so like I said I'm so sorry about that but you see it's just that I've wanted to meet you for so long except that we've actually met before sort of but we weren't really introduced back then well you were introduced to me sort of but I was shaken up by the whole MAGICAL WORLD thing that I was just then finding out about so I guess I wasn't really paying attention and I'm sorry about that but I didn't know that you were going to become so important back then and yet here you are and we have so much to talk about!" she said at slightly less than a mile a minute.

Shiori stared up at her. "Eh?" she said at the same speed, but covering a shorter distance.

"Do you shake hands?" Sakurako asked eagerly.

"... uh ... well, actually, no," said the girl who could read someone's mind with a contact lasting that long.

"Okay," said Sakurako, and bowed a few times. "Pleased to meet you!" she added cheerily.

"Who are you again?"

Negi seized the opportunity to interrupt. "Um, Shiori-san, this is Shiina Sakurako-san, a member of our class and -"

"- a person who does not have clearance to enter this facility," Fate interrupted in turn. "Shiina-san, how exactly did you get in here?"

"Oh, it was easy," Sakurako replied. "I just told everyone between the entrance and here that I was your partner, Fate-kun, and that you needed me for something, so they let me in! Wasn't that lucky?" asked the bombshell dropping bombshells ... that probably contained littler bombshells, at that.

Fate and Negi had (figuratively speaking, this time) turned to stone.

"... partner?" Shiori asked, very quietly.

"Partner!" Sakurako confirmed, holding up her card for Shiori's inspection.

"I ... see," Shiori said, very quietly.

"So, like I said, we have so much to talk about!" Sakurako enthused. "Out of all the Fatettes, you're the one I wanted to meet the most!"

"Yes, I can see why ... I'm sorry, Fatettes?"

"That's what Konoka-san called your group when I asked her about them."

"... okay, then," said Shiori, nodding slowly. "Fatettes. Yes. Hm. Well, then," she said, smiling sweetly in a way that didn't reach her eyes, which didn't look troubled or apprehensive at the moment, but that was not a comforting fact. "We do have so much to talk about. Let's have some girl talk, shall we?"

Moments later, Negi and Fate found themselves walking down the corridor away from the cell without clear memories of how they'd left the room.

Negi was the first to speak, without actually looking at Fate. "It's your own fault, you know."

"I miss the days when you took responsibility for everything," Fate replied without looking at him, either.

"Well, I'm sorry, but this time it really is your own -"

"Don't you have some problem you could go kiss into submission?"

* * *

 _Ironic_  thought Negi as he reflected on Fate's words soon afterwards, after he had headed back to the dorm room and found himself seized and firmly kissed. Asuna hadn't even given him the chance to announce his arrival, she'd simply grabbed him and started offensive osculation as she pushed him up against the door as it closed behind him.  _Well, if she insists,_  he decided, and started kissing her in return, pushing away from the door and beginning to back her down the hallway towards the living room, his hands coming up her sides to her shoulders in order to pull at the straps of the sundress she was wearing.

Asuna pulled away, then. "No," she said.

He blinked. "No?"

She shook her head, then resumed kissing him. Negi found this development faintly mystifying, but respected her wishes, simply holding her shoulders with his hands instead. It didn't take very long, even at their relatively slow pace, to reach the living room, and then drop down on the couch. They continued to kiss and caress one another, but every time Negi tried to advance things a little, or even slip his hands under Asuna's clothes without taking them off, she would silently indicate that he should stop it. Obedient as ever, Negi did so, even as the questions multiplied in his head.

Eventually, Asuna pulled back, smiling at him. "Wasn't that nice?" she asked.

"I ... guess?" Negi answered, now completely bewildered. "... okay, please don't do that," he added in response to the Look she was giving him. "I don't understand, and I hope you'll explain it to me."

Asuna sighed. "Okay, yeah, I can see why you might be a little confused. Um. Well, after I finally talked Konoka, Setsuna and Ayaka into giving me a little space - they're all off in Ayaka's room at the moment, possibly exploring other counterfactual scenarios with Chizuru, maybe - and I had the chance to think a bit, I realized that ... there were some experiences that I was still missing. Or rather, that I'd skipped over in the process of, well, experiencing certain other things. Experiences like, say, making out with someone without immediately moving on to sex."

"Ahhh," Negi said, nodding in sudden understanding.

"Now, I mean, sex is great. Sex is wonderful. I am up for it any time of the day. And sex with you is particularly great, I like having sex with you more than anybody else, even though you don't like me like that and I don't like you like that. Right?"

"Right," he agreed with her ... mostly because he suspected that this was not the time to argue the point.

"Right," Asuna agreed with herself. "You would probably rather be doing this with Akira-san, and - I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up, you're still hurting about -" she babbled a bit in the wake of the painful flinch of Negi's features.

"It's not Akira-san," Negi interrupted at last. "It's Makie."

Asuna blinked. "Huh?"

"The person who came to mind when Misa asked me who I cared about the most was Makie," he explained. "But Makie wouldn't let me explain that to her, and ... and that's where you came in, basically."

Asuna blinked some more. "Oh wow," she said in a dull tone that didn't suit an utterance of the word 'wow'. "... we've really messed up, you and me."

"You and I," he corrected automatically. "And it's okay," he added hurriedly. "As soon as I get your situation settled, I'll explain the whole thing to everyone and - please don't do that."

Asuna had her hands over her face, and her shoulders were shaking. When she looked up, though, her eyes were dry.

"I think ... we need some wise counsel," she said.

* * *

Early the next morning, Asuna walked towards the open doors of the church, just as hesitantly as she had the last time she'd come here. Just like then, the main area of the church ( _the pews_  whispered one of the voices inside her head) was empty, but one of the doors of the confession booths was closed, suggesting that someone was waiting to listen. With one last deep breath, she went in the other open booth, and closed the door behind her before sitting down on the bench inside.

"Um ... hi," she started off.

"Good morning," said the warm, friendly voice she remembered from a while ago.

Of course, remembering that made her remember other things. "Ah, well, I guess that I ought to start off by apologizing for running out of here in such a state, last time. You really did give me some good advice, and I shouldn't have taken it the way that I did. So, I'm sorry."

"... well, all right, but I'm not sure what you're talking about," the man on the other side of the divider answered, sounding confused. "When was this?"

Asuna blinked. Did that happen enough that he'd gotten jaded or something? "It was a few weeks ago, just before summer vacation. I'd heard that there was someone giving advice here, so I came in, and ... well. That happened."

"Ah," said the voice. "Yes, I think I understand now. I'm sorry, young lady, but you seem to have been the victim of a prank by one of the more mischievous members of our young laity. For ... various reasons that don't particularly matter, she took it on herself to pose as me and give advice to many of her classmates when they came in here, some time ago."

"Misora!" Asuna gasped.

"I can't confirm that, buuuut ... well, all that I will say is that I regret that whatever she said to you made you run away in tears, as you say."

"No, no, that's ... that's on me. She actually gave me some really good advice, I just ... wasn't in the right place to handle it," she admitted. "Um, okay, this is kind of weird, then, so maybe I ought to go."

"You can if you want, but that won't help with whatever problem brought you here today, will it?" the voice asked. "I'm willing to listen to your problems, whatever they may be."

Asuna paused, then sat back down again. "... okay, but I should probably tell you that I'm not a Christian ... exactly," she added, as memories of lives lived in various forms of the faith abruptly impinged on her awareness.

"'Exactly'?" he repeated.

"It's complicated," she told him. "I'm complicated."

"No one is so complicated that they can't find their way to God somehow," the voice assured her. "All that it takes is the courage to take the first step. Why don't you start by telling me what's happened to you recently, since the last time you were here to seek counsel?"

"... well, that's really too long a story, so ... I'll just start from where I think things started to go a little screwy."

"All right."

* * *

 _Late again!_  thought Misora frustratedly as she headed up the stairs from the cloister to pass through the chapel on her way to school. The jokes about how the fastest girl in class was always one of the last to show up, sometimes getting through the doors just as they were closing, had been funny initially, but they were really starting to wear on her by this point. She really wished Cocone hadn't vanished off on whatever mysterious errand had taken her away a few days ago. She might not have liked the way her partner woke her up, but she was always sure to get up in enough time to -

With a cry of utter horror, Father Tamanaka burst from the confessional booth, flinging himself to the ground before Misora with his hands up over his ears. "Why, God,  _why?_ " he cried.

"... Father?" she asked, genuinely startled by this.

He didn't seem to notice her, instead looking around frantically until his eyes settled on the altar, then dashing off towards it to start praying loudly.

Misora blinked. Then, slowly, turned to look at the confessional booth.

 _I really ought to run as fast as I can away from this, shouldn't I?_  she told herself as she did the exact opposite.

"... so then she jumps into my arms and starts kissing me, so of course I kiss her back, I mean who wouldn't? And she tells me that Negi confessed to Akira. I'm shocked, but you know, thinking about a little, it kind of makes sense, after all, I mean, Akira is gorgeous, so who wouldn't fall for her? So how the heck am I supposed to know that it's all just a big misunderstanding? If I'd known, I'd have clarified matters, and now he wouldn't be so damn traumatized, but -" A pause, and a long sigh. "- okay, big misunderstandings are sort of common around here. Especially where I'm concerned. And ... I guess ... he knew that she got him, in ways that I never did until much later ... so maybe I should have been able to figure it out."

A somewhat longer pause, and Misora finally found the opportunity to raise her voice. "Um, Asuna?"

"Yes, Father? Wait a minute, how d'you know my name, I didn't - oh. Well, I guess it's not that hard to ... wait a minute, what happened to your voice, Father?"

"Uh ... well, it's kind of a big misunderstanding," Misora told her.

Among Misora's many talents was a fairly good grasp of precise timing, a necessity for a runner. So she was fairly sure that there was slightly less than forty-five seconds between the time she said that and the time that the door to her side of the booth was flung open and Asuna looked in, seething in utter fury. (She was close, it was actually forty-seven.)

"Mi. So. Raaaaa!" Asuna bit out. "You again?!"

"... I don't suppose it would do any good at all to say 'again' in a bewildered manner?" Misora asked as she tried desperately to climb the rear wall of the booth. Curse the lack of handholds!

"And after you had the temerity to tell me about your earlier misdeeds!" Asuna ranted. "To try and make it like this time was different!"

"What? No, wait, no, Asuna, that really was the Father, he's freaking out over in front of the altar, see?" Misora frantically pointed off to one side, hoping against hope that Asuna would turn and she could run by her.

No such luck. "I'm not falling for that, Misora!"

"Man, who  _says_  that honesty is the best policy?" Misora wailed.

Asuna paused, something about the situation finally suggesting to her that, somewhat implausibly, Misora might not be totally guilty  _this time_. "You're saying it wasn't always you listening?" she asked suspiciously.

"No, no, just ... for the last part, you know, when you were making out with Makie and feeling guilty about it later," Misora confirmed. "... yeah, I don't even believe myself when I say that, and I know that it's true! Ahh, just not the face, okay?"

"I'm not going to hit you," Asuna growled, by now more or less calmed down. "But I do want to talk to you."

Misora swallowed, checked her cell phone, and winced. "Well, I was already going to be late for school, so I guess we're both cutting class, today."

* * *

With Asuna off seeking counsel - something he sincerely hoped she would find, regardless of the cost to him personally - Negi found the dorm room a bit stifling, and so he headed out ... somewhat aimlessly, he had to admit. He wouldn't be able to take care of the last phase of his plan until after school, so there was no point in heading where he needed to go right away. The person he needed to talk to wouldn't be there for hours, yet.

So he was going to have to wait. His steps took him to the cafe, where he had a cup of tea, and proceeded to wait.

As he did so, a realization came to him. He was terrible at waiting. Always had been. Oh, he was good at finding things to do to occupy his time until something was supposed to happen. But doing nothing ... that he'd never been able to get a handle on. He supposed, on the whole, that it was better to be able to find something to do while one was waiting, but, on the other hand, there would be times when that wasn't an option. Times like, for example, now.

Times when all that he could do would be to sit and reflect on things that had already happened, or imagine things that would happen - or at least, that he planned on making happen. The burden he was carrying, both literal and figurative, weighed on him in moments like this. Had he truly considered all the alternatives before undertaking his current plan? No. He had not, and could not, under the current time constraints, and he had to accept that this truly was the best option available -

"Negi-sensei?"

He blinked, turned to look at the person addressing him, then blinked again. "Satsuki-san? Shouldn't you be in class right now?"

The chef nodded. "Yes, but Fate-sensei gave the whole class the day off."

Multiple blinks. "Can he do that?"

Satsuki shrugged, spreading her hands to indicate uncertainty. "I don't know if he can, but he did. And since Iinchou wasn't in class again today, everyone took off in all directions. I'm surprised that I'm the first one to encounter you."

"What is Fate doing?" he asked ... and realized the answer to his question, almost immediately. Fate was, of course, trying to  _help_  him ... in his usual heedless fashion, caring only for the results. Instead of waiting for the end of class, now, Negi would be able to go see the person he needed to see immediately. Helpful, but fundamentally wrong-headed. That was Fate all over, unfortunately.

Of course, Negi also suspected that wasn't the only reason. "I think I understand what's going on here. Someone pretty close to him has recently arrived from the other side, so of course he wants to spend as much time with his friend as possible." He braced for the inevitable 'he has friends?' comment.

It didn't come. "Oh, good," said Satsuki, smiling beatifically. "He's seemed a lot less lonely since he made friends with Sakurako, but I'm glad that he has old friends showing up as well. Hopefully, it'll put him in a better mood."

Negi, as he often did, felt ashamed of himself. "Yes, very much so," he said to fill the space.

"Are you okay, sensei?" Satsuki asked, then, looking a bit concerned. "Have you been eating well?"

"... actually, I sort of did skip breakfast this morning," he admitted.

She shook her head. "That's not good, sensei. Someone leading an active life like you shouldn't miss meals. Especially if you're having as much sex as you are.

"Thank you, sensei, I have to admit that I've often wondered what it would be like to travel at slightly less than the speed of sound," Satsuki said a moment later, seemingly unruffled by recent events. "And I also appreciate you taking me to the car," she added with a glance at the Chao Bao Zi, behind which car they were presently standing.

"Don't mention it," Negi said firmly. "Please, seriously, do not mention it. Satsuki-san, how did you know about -" He proceeded to wave his hands in the air in a way that he hoped would suggest his sexual adventures of late.

"Perhaps I shouldn't mention it," she said lightly. She smiled gently at his despairing look. "Sensei, really now. Pretty much the entire class, by this point, has done it with you. I would have to be an idiot not to know about it, and while I admit that I'm not as clever as Chao or Hakase, I hope you don't think I'm an idiot."

"No, no, of course I don't," Negi replied, covering his face with his hands. "I'm sorry for implying that I did. I guess I was just surprised at how casual you were about it ... and I guess I thought you might be ... upset," he concluded.

"Why would I be upset?"

"Well ... there's the whole 'violation of the sacred boundaries between teacher and student' thing," he replied.

Satsuki shrugged. "You're not our teacher anymore," she told him. "You haven't been since the end of the break. You've entered the world of adulthood, and you deserve to have adult fun if you choose to have it. I mean it," she insisted to his startled face. "Given the burdens that you have freely taken on yourself, you should be free to grasp at whatever tiny moments of happiness you can, while you are giving your entire life to a project which might not ever see fruition."

That was the second time that he'd been told that he wasn't their teacher any more, and it honestly didn't hurt any less.

"Now ... that said," Satsuki continued. "I hope you don't mistake my acceptance for  _approval_. I think that there are probably much better ways to find the happiness that I mentioned than rampant promiscuity. But ... my approval, or lack thereof, shouldn't matter to you as much as your self-approval does. And while I also think you would probably have done a lot better to just confess your feelings to Akira-san -"

"Wait," Negi interrupted. "You thought I had feelings for Akira-san? You too?"

"Too?" she asked, blinking.

"Makie thought ... she came to the conclusion that I ..." he trailed off.

"Oh. Well, when I gave it thought - I didn't really ever give it much thought, you understand, I don't - sorry - waste time worrying about people's romances - but when I did think about it, I thought it would be nice if you had feelings for her, too."

"Too?" he asked, blinking.

"Yes," Satsuki nodded. "Did you not realize that Akira-san is in love with you?"

She had never really been able to see Negi-sensei become boggled at close range before, and found herself in complete empathy with all of her classmates - like Haruna, for example - who clearly enjoyed causing this particular sensation in him. "She is?" he gasped. "But ... but she was the one who told me that ... but then I ... and she ... ngaaaah," Negi concluded, holding his head.

"Headache?" she asked, sympathetically.

He nodded, eyes tightly shut.

"Does aspirin work on you?"

Slow shake of the head.

"Oh dear. Well, I suppose that I could try making a soup with some herbs which supposedly act as natural analgesics," Satsuki mused, glancing at the Chao Bao Zi. "It'll just take a few moments -"

"No, no, please don't trouble yourself," Negi said, eyes still shut but waving one of his hands. "You're bound to have some paying customers rather shortly, and I'll be all right in a ... I'll be all right," he concluded.

"Are you sure?"

He nodded.

"Well, all right. But you ought to come in and rest inside, rather than out here in the sun," she said, heading around to the car's door and starting to unlock it.

"You're probably right," he agreed. "I'll try and stay out of your way."

"Well, I hope you'll be willing to reach up and get some things for me that are out of my reach," she said, glancing over her shoulder at him. "I have a step-ladder, but if there's a convenient tall person handy -"

"Yes, right, of course," he said, following her and smiling almost completely genuinely. Once again, just being around Satsuki was making him feel a bit better. He sat down in the chair inside the car and watched as she got to work, heating up the stovetop and taking out ingredients in an order which felt rehearsed, practiced. Like a kind of magic all her own.

"If you don't mind my asking ... how did you know that Akira-san had feelings for me?" he asked, after a few moments of watching her.

"Well, the first hint that I got was how happy she was, in the aftermath of the school festival, when she talked about how you'd chosen to go with her on the haunted house tour, instead of Maki-chan or Iinchou," Satsuki mused. "She's a quiet girl, you know? She doesn't talk about or express herself very much, so when she does, you know that it matters. And then, a little while later, I saw her helping you out while you were looking for something. Again, she just looked so very happy to be spending time with you. I suppose ... you know, when you think about her and Iinchou and Maki-chan ... Iinchou has had crushes on other ... um ..." She actually hesitated.

"I'm not under any illusions about Iinchou," Negi assured her.

"Well, good," she said dubiously. "But anyway, Maki-chan has had crushes before you, too. But with Akira-san ... I don't think she's ever been even a little bit in love with anyone, and so maybe she might not react as obviously as other people do. But her feelings are still very deep."

"Like the ocean," he said out loud. "I never even thought about that. I mean, I care about her. And I respect her, and I think she's given me some very good advice, and ... but I mean, you've given me good advice too," he added.

Satsuki nodded. "Yes, I see what you mean. That's not really a good enough reason to fall in love with someone. Really, there's no more reason for you to become attracted to her than there is for you to be attracted to me, and obviously you aren't attracted to me."

Negi started to nod, then stopped. "Wait ... who says that I'm not -"

Satsuki kept her eyes on the carrots she was chopping. "Well, it's obvious, isn't it? I'm definitely not your type."

"I have a type?" he asked.

She paused, sighed. "Negi-sensei, I don't have any illusions about myself. I'm well aware that I'm fat and ugly. You don't have to pretend otherwise."

"What?" Negi yelped. "Satsuki-san, where in the world did you get that idea?"

She kept her focus firmly on her work as she spoke to him in a dull, lifeless tone. "I'm doing better than I was at the start of the year, at least. Chao insisted on putting me on a diet and exercise plan before she'd agree to let me work in the restaurant. She said that she was scared that the work would give me a heart attack before graduation at the rate that I was going, and I certainly wasn't in any position to argue with her. But, like I said, I know that I'm still fat, and I know that I'm always going to be ugly. That's just how the world works. If you like to cook, you like to eat. And I really like to cook. So I eat too much, and so nobody will ever think I'm beautiful."

"That's not true," he said, standing up. "You have a beautiful personality that shines through your every -"

"Sensei!" she interrupted, more loudly than he could ever remember her speaking. She'd even stopped cutting the vegetables - admittedly because they'd been quite finely diced. "Please, don't. Don't talk about inner beauty to someone like me. Or about 'personality'. All of the girls that you've been with have great personalities, of course. There aren't any bad apples in our class. Well - no, not even Haruna. But they're all also incredibly good looking. Even the other girl who frets about her looks, and no, I won't tell you who that is -"

"Natsumi," he interjected.

"I neither confirm nor deny ... but anyway, she's got a certain wholesome, 'girl next door', appeal. And I ... just don't. That's reality." She picked up the cutting board and, with the flat of her knife, slid its contents into the pan on the stove in front of her. The veggies began to sizzle.

"I had no idea you felt this way, Satsuki-san," Negi said. "I wish that you'd let me know that this was what you thought about yourself before now, and I'd have tried to help you ... most likely in the same way that Chao did, admittedly, but without the blackmail," he admitted.

"It wasn't blackmail -"

"That's not important, though," he asserted quickly. "Satsuki-san, I think that you are very, very attractive. I really do mean what I said about your personality. But you're not going to believe me when I say it, are you? I wish that I did have the words to convince you that I'm telling the truth. But I don't. I can only do it through my actions."

She wasn't often bewildered by things people said. So this was something of a novel experience for her. "What do you -"

He reached out, grabbed the hand that didn't have a knife in it, and pulled it down to rest it against his crotch.

Satsuki's eyes went wide. "Sensei!" she gasped. "What in the world are you -"

"Wait," he said.

And then her eyes got even bigger as what she was feeling ...  _also_  got bigger.

"Do you think," he asked, as quietly as she normally spoke, "that I'd get like this if I didn't find the person touching me attractive?"

"I ... I ... ai-yai-yai-yai," she replied, shaking her head.

And then, quite suddenly, so that once again it wasn't clear who made the first move, the two of them were kissing.

* * *

On the bridge leading towards Evangeline's resort, the usual flash of light announced the arrival of one of the usual visitors, this time in the company of an unusual one, who, as she materialized, was saying, "- cannot believe that you are so freaking casual about trespassing in the home of the Dark Evangel and oh my God where ARE we?"

"Her actual home," Asuna explained to the gaping Misora beside her. "And I'm telling you, it's not trespassing. I've got a standing invitation. She's training me to be a mid-level boss of evil."

"Okay, there are about a thousand different things wrong with that sentence, which is amazing given how short it was," Misora said to Asuna's back as she started down the bridge. She quickly followed along behind her. "But never mind that - why are we here?"

"I never realized that you had so much in common with Yue," Asuna snarked.

"Not - urgh. Why did you bring me here to have the conversation you said you wanted to have?"

"Because a day in here is an hour outside and it's going to be a pretty long conversation," she replied casually, looking around. "Has she rearranged this place again? The stairs down used to be -"

"Yes, I have," Evangeline announced as she stepped into sight, stark naked and dripping wet. "It's my house, I can do what I want."

"Oh, hey, Eva-chan, how's it going?" Asuna asked, while Misora goggled in sheer amazement. "You're naked."

"You're dumb," Evangeline replied.

"... competing obvious statements, right, right. Why -"

"What did I just say about it being my house?"

After a moment, Asuna began to smirk. "Maki-chan's getting to you. Isn't she?"

"No," the little vampire growled. "She is ... she ... I get to other people, other people do not get to me! Take a goddamn picture, Kasuga, it will last longer!" she added sharply.

Hesitantly, Misora began to pull her camera-equipped cell phone from her pocket.

"That was sarcasm, idiot!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, I just, I just thought it might be a command, and I certainly wouldn't want to to to please don't kill me," she concluded.

"Geh. You're a disgrace to a long history of tough-minded nuns, you know that?" Evangeline sneered. "Oh, get going. All the rest are inside, already, preparing a surprise party for you. Apparently, the last one didn't have enough sex."

"Um ... surprise party?" Asuna asked, a bit weakly.

"Yes, I did just ruin the surprise. I'm evil!" And with that, the evil cute vampire stalked away to be evil somewhere else.

"Relax," Asuna told Misora as they headed down the spiral staircase to the beach below the resort. "Her bark is a lot worse than her bite."

"Well, good for her bite," Misora replied. "How about her fists, claws, feet, and spells?"

Asuna sighed. "I won't claim that she's harmless -"

"That's good, it'd really make me doubt everything else that you said if you startled lying so blatantly."

She decided to ignore that. "- but she's not a menace, even if she wants people to think that she's a menace." Glancing over her shoulder at her classmate trailing along behind her, Asuna's lips quirked up in a half-smile. "I bet she was hoping you'd go for the crucifix in the face and 'away thou minion of Satan' bit."

"Yes, because a tiny cross is really going to intimidate anybody," Misora said, disgustedly. "Well, never mind. Like I was saying before I was so nakedly and cutely interrupted - you really think you're going to need a whole day to tell me your story?"

"Half of that, then the other half will be listening to your responses and arguing about them," Asuna replied with a shrug. "Don't look at me like that, it really is a long story. Feels like it's taken more than a year to get to this point, instead of just a few weeks."

Eventually, the stairway came to an end on the edge of a beach, and Asuna dropped down on the last stairs to start undoing her shoes.

"What're you doing?" Misora asked.

"... engaging in ontological paradoxes," Asuna answered once her first shoe came off. "Isn't that obvious?"

Misora stifled her countersnark, and sat down to take her own shoes off. Once that was done, and the two of them were walking barefoot on the sand towards the water's edge, Asuna finally began to talk.

She told her everything. Every detail, since it had began - at least, her understanding of when it had begun, a little earlier than the narrative you've read so far. To her, it had begun when she'd learned what she was going to have to do, the sacrifice she was called upon to make. Her hopes and dreams had ended then, and so she'd tried to regain them in any way that she could. And all that had led to ... what it had led to. Misora listened in silence.

"And that's where you came in," Asuna concluded, feeling the waves of the imaginary sea curling around her toes. "So. How big of a sinner do you think I am?"

"... well. You're a bigger sinner than poor Father Tamanaka was ready to deal with, that's for sure," Misora answered, shaking her head.

"Do I disgust you?"

"Nope," she replied quickly. "Asuna, you really need to understand one thing. Yes, you're a sinner. So am I. No smart remarks about 'mysterious nuns' please. We're all sinners, and one day, all of us will be held accountable for our sins. It's not my place to do that. And frankly, from what you're saying, you're going to face that judgement a lot sooner than anyone should."

"It's not -" Asuna started to say.

"I do not want to get into metaphysical arguments with you," Misora interjected. "Mostly because I don't know enough about the subject, and honestly, I don't think you do either. But I believe that you -  _you_ , Kagarazuka Asuna, separate from whatever Princess Asuna entity or whatever is a part of you - have a soul. And if the person that you are dies in this process, then your soul will go to whatever fate awaits it. Because you are a real person. I sincerely and utterly believe that."

Asuna drew in a deep breath, then let it out. "Thank you," she said, as quietly as Satsuki ever said anything.

"Now, that said, you're a real person who has done some pretty bad things, and should stop  _doing_  them," added Misora. "Like, now. Before you stop doing anything. I can't tell you how you should try to seek forgiveness, but stopping engaging the sins for which you need forgiveness is generally thought to be a good first step."

"You're probably right," Asuna said, nodding.

"No probablys about it."

"Unfortunately -"

"Also no unfortunatelys," Misora strove to interject, but Asuna was not to be stopped.

"Unfortunately," she repeated, turning around to look at Misora with a wan little smile, "it's going to have to be some time other than now."

"Oh for pity's sake."

"Well, I'm sorry," said Asuna, who didn't (she had to admit) sound all that sorry. "But you heard Eva-chan. They're throwing a surprise party, and it's going to be a surprise sex party. It would be  _rude_  if I showed up and then turned down the sex, don't you think? You wouldn't want me to be rude, would you?"

Misora rolled her eyes and made disgusted noises.

"And just like it's important to avoid rudeness," Asuna continued, starting to walk towards Misora, "it's also important to keep one's promises, don't you think? And since I promised Eva-chan  _and_  Negi that I'd try to get him to be with every girl in our class -"

"Okay, let's just hooooold it right there, Slutty McSlutstein!" Misora snapped, backing away. "If you're talking about me, now -"

Asuna just nodded, grinning a bit.

"- well, you can just tell them that you tried and you failed, and no one will blame you for failing," she concluded.

"A, you don't know Eva-chan all that well, because she totally will, and B, I haven't really tried yet."

"I'm flattered, really," said Misora who did not (she had to admit) sound all that flattered. More panicky than anything else. "But I've kind of already got a boyfriend, and -"

"You  _do_?" Asuna asked, halting dead in her tracks.

"I'll ignore the tone of stunned amazement, and just say -"

"Well, I'm sorry, but I figured that you and Cocone-chan were -"

"Gross!" Misora snapped. "She's ten, you know, and oh yeah, I forgot who I was talking to for a minute, there," she concluded, hand over her face.

"Wait," said Asuna, frowning now. "Wait wait wait. I have a sneaking suspicion ... by any chance, oh dear classmate who will always be honest with me, is your so-called boyfriend the guy whose bride you intend to one day become?"

Misora stood in silence for a moment. "Shoot," she said at last.

"Christ?" Asuna asked, incredulous. "You refer to Christ as your boyfriend? Isn't that blasphemous?"

"I'll bring it up at confession, assuming Father Tamanaka ever recovers," Misora replied. "But I'm serious, I intend to take vows when I'm old enough, and I intend to live up to them."

"You're going to become celibate and chaste. You're going to sacrifice everything for -"

"Do you really want to lecture me on sacrificing your own happiness for someone else's sake?" Misora asked sharply. " _You_?"

"All right, I obviously can't do that," Asuna admitted. "On the other hand, what will be the point of striving to live a life in denial of your sexual impulses if you've never actually experienced what giving into them feels like?"

Misora gaped. "That, that is the most self-serving, half-assed argument I've ever heard!" she protested.

"As self-serving and half-assed as claiming to have Jesus as a boyfriend?" Asuna asked ashly. Archly, rather.

Misora's hand came up again to cover her eyes. Then, quite abruptly she turned and walked away from Asuna, who blinked in surprise. Before the other girl could open her mouth to say anything - whether to apologize or start accusing her friend of genuine cowardice, she hadn't quite decided yet - Misora turned on her heel and started walking back towards Asuna, dragging one foot in the wet sand as she did, making a long line.

"Okay," Misora said at last when she was standing in front of Asuna once more. "There is clearly only one way that we're going to settle this. We're going to race."

Out of everything that Misora might have said, this was pretty much the last thing Asuna was expecting to hear. "I'm sorry, what?"

"I am still not wholly convinced that you didn't throw our last race," Misora declared, pointing a shaky finger at her. "And I'm also seriously, seriously annoyed that the promise you made me to give me another one where we'd finally settle the score was a big fat honkin' lie waaaay bigger than anything any mysterious nuns might possibly have said about not being me! So this what we're gonna do! Four times around this island, starting and ending here, with this line," she said, tapping it with her toes to make it clear what she was talking about. "If I win, then you'll stop trying to inveigle me in your sexual antics. But if you win ... well, I'll do it. I'll do it with Negi-kun, or you, or whoever you suggest. Other than Cocone-chan!" she added very quickly as Asuna began to open her mouth.

"I wasn't going to suggest Cocone-chan," Asuna said in a very affronted manner that was not actually all that convincing.

"Or Sister Shakti," Misora added quickly.

"... I definitely wasn't going to bring her up," Asuna added, far more convincingly, with a raised eyebrow.

Misora coughed uncomfortably. "Yeah. Well. Um."

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Asuna asked. "Gambling with your fate like this?"

The track star glared at her. "'It could have gone either way,' you said. Well, here's where we find out that, no, it couldn't."

"All right," she said with a shrug, and started to undo her skirt.

"... what the heck are you doing?" Misora asked, boggling.

"You don't expect me to run in this, do you?" asked Asuna, gesturing at her casual clothes, which were coming off even as she spoke. "I don't expect you to run in your uniform."

"So we're going to do it in our underwear?"

"I'm okay with less if you -"

"Underwear it is!"

The underwear, Misora reasoned, was not actually that much more revealing than what she wore while actually running. And she never thought about sexy things while she was running, no matter who she was running against. Nope. Never.

They crouched behind the line she'd drawn in the sand, preparing mentally as well as physically.

"It occurs to me that we don't have a starter," Asuna said after a moment.

"Yeah, that is kind of a problem."

"On three, then?"

"When you say on three, do you mean 'three, two, one, go' or 'three, two, one' and then go on one?"

"Which would you prefer?"

Deep breath. "Three. Two. Onnnnnnne. Go!"

And they ran.

Asuna took the lead from the first. Her stride was longer, by no more than a handful of centimeters, but over dozens of steps, those handful of centimeters added up. And she kept that lead, no matter how much Misora tried to quicken the pace, as they ran around the island, once, then again. But Asuna didn't smile in triumph as they headed into the third circling of the beach. Her lead was strong ... but why wasn't it stronger? She was committed to a win. Wasn't she?

And then, from behind her, as they dashed towards the starting line for the third time, she heard Misora's footfalls drawing closer to her. Incredible. They really were equally matched. She didn't let the surprise make her slacken the pace, but Misora's acceleration was ever so slightly greater than her own. In a moment, Asuna could see her competitor in the corner of her eye, face drawn, jaw clenched, agony showing in her face. But running, and catching up -

\- and passing -

\- and somehow, amazingly, holding the tiny lead that her last inning burst had bought her long enough to cross the line for the fourth time a full second before Asuna did. And then keeping going for almost a quarter of the distance as she slowly ran herself out.

"You win," Asuna said, hoarsely, as she trotted up to where Misora had collapsed into the sand.

"Uhhhhh," Misora replied in an agreeable tone.

"You really, really didn't want to do it with us, did you?" she asked after a moment.

"It ... is important," Misora managed to say.

"Why?"

For a second, she didn't think Misora was going to answer. And then, just as she was about to step forward to see if her friend was really all right, the runner did. "God made me for a purpose," she said. "But He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure."

"That's ... deep," Asuna said, impressed.

Misora decided not to reveal that she'd gotten it from an English movie the running team had been shown during a training camp once.

"Okay," Asuna said, reaching down to help Misora up to her feet again. "Then you don't have to umph?" And somewhat surprisingly found herself being kissed.

"This time, I also felt His approval of the idea of throwing the thing," Misora explained as she pulled back. "So ..."

* * *

Satsuki barely had the presence of mind to off-handedly pull down the shutters of the car's windows, but she'd managed it all the same. Negi respected that, having by now instinctively cast the sound-blocking spell surrounding them. Admittedly, he had the distinct impression that it wasn't really going to do a lick of good, since even more than the sound, the motion of the car was going to give away what was going on. But maybe she'd be able to claim that it was some new system that had gotten out of control.

"Dishwasher," she gasped between kisses. "The ... dishwasher ... went crazy."

The degree to which they were on the same wave length was a little disturbing, to be honest. As was the discomfort on her face as he got her shirt undone and saw the surprisingly small breasts beneath. With vague notions of soothing it, he bent down to take one of her nipples in his mouth, but saw that he was just putting even more of a flush on her cheeks. Wait, could it be that he was taking excitement for discomfort? Oh, no, he shouldn't assume, regardless, so he pulled back to ask.

Her mouth was on his again before he could get a word out, and one of her hands snaked down to grab hold of his member with a startlingly firm grip.  _Well, that answers that question,_  he thought vaguely as he let her pull him closer, the tip of his member pressing up against her vagina.

"Are you -" he started to ask.

"Yes!"

"We -" He broke off before he could finish off the cliche, shaking his head a bit, and began to push upwards and inwards. In just a moment, he was pushing upwards against the barrier of her hymen, and, with a deep breath, he proceeded to push through it. Satsuki's eyes went cross-eyed. Well, the only thing to do now was to keep going on, Negi decided, and began the back and forth motion he'd grown so practiced at recently.

Her feet left the floor and they fell back against the back wall of the car as her knees came up to wrap around his hips. And at once, he was shown to be right. The car was rocking.

 _Well, let's hope no one comes knocking_ , he thought somewhat whimsically.

* * *

"Okay, whether you believe it or not," Misora panted when Asuna finally pulled back from their second kiss, "I have no experience at all whatsoever in this, so you'll have to -"

"I'll lead, don't worry," Asuna reassured her as she tugged Misora's arms up, then peeled her classmate's bra off and over their heads, before nonchalantly flipping it down on the sand. "I prefer to lead, actually."

"Anh," Misora moaned when Asuna bent down to lightly nibble at one of her small breasts while her hands caressed the other one. "Forgive me for asking, but, but when you have  _not_  lead?"

After humming for a few moments while keeping Misora's left nipple between her teeth, Asuna answered, "Only with Eva-chan, I guess."

It was true; Evangeline was the only one of her sexual partners, at least in this lifetime, to match the knowledge she had amassed through all those other times, so long ago. Even Takahata-sensei had been, in a way, as receptive as an inexpert maid, compared to her nebulous memories of powerful mages and warriors, many of whom she'd prefer to forget regardless. And despite all the practice Negi was getting, she supposed it'd still take him decades if not more to catch up to her.

"Figures. That's Asuna-chan. Oh God," Misora's toes curled as Asuna's hands idly wandered down her thin yet fit body, until they cupped the other girl's vulva under her panties and then inserted an exploring finger. "Oh, Jesus!"

"Language," Asuna chided, her mouth going the opposite way, to plant kisses on Misora's collarbone before caressing her lips.

"What are you talking about, there's no better language than mph mph mmmpphhh," Misora mumbled before her mouth was fully covered.

"It's bad language if you're using it during sex," Asuna rasped, adding a second finger in and chuckling at Misora's cute blush. She began rotating the fingers inside, deciding it still was too early in the girl's experience to add a third one. Although her left hand went on to squeeze one tight buttock, she didn't finger her asshole precisely because of that. Instead, she tugged the panties down Misora's leg, since they were getting in the way. Catching the hint, Misora's trembling hands undid the clasp of Asuna's bra, and once her breasts were free, she began to clumsily copy what Asuna had done to her chest moments ago. "Yes, like that, you're good for a first timer," Asuna cooed, softly patting Misora's ass.

Misora arched her back. "Thanks, oh! Keep doing that!"

"What, this?" Asuna asked, patting the butt a second time, now harder.

"Yes, yes, like thaaaat!" Misora babbled and drooled, Asuna's fingers going faster into her. With a sly chuckle, the pats on her butt grew in speed as well, until they became downright spanks, in synchrony with Asuna's finger-fucking. "Oh! Oh Asuna, I'm going to, to, to!" Misora cried, trashing in her arms. "Iiiiiiiiiii!"

Asuna waited until the cries stopped, and Misora dropped her head aside, almost sobbing, before quietly withdrawing her hand from the vagina and licking the clear liquid from them. She then extended the leftovers before Misora's face. "Want some?"

Half-heartedly, Misora pushed her hand aside. "Ew. That's gross."

"No, that's your loss," Asuna shrugged, licking the rest of the liquid, and then smiling. "Did it feel good?"

Misora nodded timidly.

"So you'll keep doing it with us?" Asuna asked, somewhat hopeful.

Misora sighed. "I really wish it hadn't been that good. Because I still want to be a nun, but now I'm never going to fucking forget this. And I know myself; like with every other guilty pleasure, like pranking others or lazing around, I'm going to have to keep doing it behind my superiors' backs, and you know what? I'm kind of fed up of half-doing things by now. So I won't be a good nun, but I'll never be a good libertine either. Thank you for that, Asuna."

"Aw, you don't mean it."

Misora pouted. "Why do I always have to be joking? Why can't I ever say things seriously, for real, at least once?"

Asuna hugged her, and Misora didn't resist. "Misora-chan. Trust me, I've met, don't ask me where or how, far too many members of the church who were far worse than you ever could be, and they still died respected and beloved members of their communities. You'll be fine, no matter how many children you have under Sister Shakti's nose. I just know it."

Misora pulled back, sniffing. "Oooookayyyy, now you're getting really weird. Mother's Day weird."

Asuna smiled. "Hey, yeah. Remember that Mother's Day?"

"Which one of the Mother's Days when we'd sulk away from everyone else, pretending it was a stupid gaijin date and then go off to play pranks on people?"

"I mean the one where we learned no one else was celebrating it either."

"Oh, yeah," Misora sighed, sitting down on the sand, Asuna at her side. "When Iinchou told us she'd never spent a single Mother's or Father's Day with her parents either ..."

"... because they were stupid gaijin dates, which was a fancy way to say her parents just didn't care enough."

"Well," Misora said, staring at the false horizon line, "there's a reason why they're all dumped into a boarding school, and I don't mean the prestige. And yet, their parents will still have the galls to be mad when they learn what you were doing."

"I don't really want to think about that, not right now."

"Well, you'll have to, sooner or later. Ugh, I think I have sand in my asscrack," she cringed, reaching down with a hand.

Asuna smiled again, worming her tongue out. "I can take care of that..."

"Eww! Double gross!" Misora shuddered.

"Yep, double being the key word," Asuna sing-sang, moving the smaller girl down on her back and then moving around so her crotch was on top of Misora's face. "But don't worry, I only have sand in my cunny, isn't that nice?"

"You, you must be joking, even so, pee comes out of there, I, I yai yi yiiiiiiiiiii!" she said when she felt Asuna's mouth delicately placing a first black kiss on her.

Soon enough, Misora decided the least she could do to repay Asuna's weird kindness was to make a sacrifice of her own. Christianity, after all, was all about making sacrifices for others.

So she thanked heavens she at least didn't have to kiss Asuna's ass while closing her eyes and moving her mouth towards the expecting vagina.

Oh, and she also mentally prayed for forgiveness.

* * *

"Nnn!" Satsuki cried out. Both her own quiet tendencies and the fact that his mouth was very much on hers kept her from making a lot of noise as she announced her orgasm.

Feeling her tighten around him gave him the warning that his own was about to ensue. Negi pulled back, intending to give her the option to make an informed decision on the matter, only for her to push forward to kiss him just as soundly as he'd been kissing her a few moments before. As he had too often of late, Negi found himself wondering why he even bothered.

Then he saw the answer in her eyes as he spewed up into her.

"Ah," she said, pulling back.

"Sorry," he said.

"No, no, it's ... I should be apologizing to you," she replied. "Do you want me to?" Satsuki asked after a moment

"Let's just leave it at that," he suggested, smiling warmly at her.

"Right, right," she said. "Why aren't you getting softer? Aren't you supposed to get softer?"

"Now would normally be the time when someone else would chime in with the revelation that I can go for hours," Negi explained. "I don't like to brag about it, obviously," he added to her stunned expression.

"I ... have no idea what I'm supposed to say to that," said the wisest member of his class.

He shrugged, indicating that he wasn't sure what she ought to say either.

"Excuse me ... is something the matter in there?" asked a voice from outside the car.

After a brief instant of terrified paralysis, Negi rolled back from Satsuki as she pulled down her shirt and closed her smock before heading over to the window and sliding the blinds open to reveal a student from one of the other classes. "Dishwasher problem," she announced. "Sorry."

"Oh, that's all right, I was just ... um ..."

"What'll it be?" Satsuki asked cheerfully.

"... I'll have what you're having," said the student, staring at her smile.

"... sorry, that dish isn't ready for public consumption," Satsuki declared after a moment. "And actually, we're closed for repairs and testing of some of our equipment." With that, she slid down the blinds again.

"Satsuki, what are you -" Negi started to ask.

"Negi ... have you ever heard of the mile high club?" she asked, before heading for the car's steering wheel.

* * *

"So then what happened?" Sakurako asked eagerly.

"Well, he apparently picked up his severed arm and started patting her head with its hand, to comfort and reassure her," Shiori said, totally deadpan.

"Seriously?" Sakurako asked, then dissolved into helpless laughter.

"That's what Koyomi told me," Shiori confirmed, genuinely smiling at the girl seated beside her on the couch. It was funny, in a way. They'd always been happy when they were around Fate, but there had never been much in the way of laughter. She'd never appreciated just how much something so simple could warm the heart so much.

"Did you seriously do that?" Sakurako asked over the back of the couch towards the desk where Fate was busily grading papers.

"As I am not listening to your conversation, I cannot guess at what you are asking about," Fate replied without looking up.

"Oh, like fun you're not," Sakurako groused, shaking her head.

"No, he's telling the truth, probably," Shiori explained. "He used to do this to us, all the time. We'd be talking, and one of us would say something to him, and he'd say just that, 'I'm not listening'. And we never ever caught him making reference to anything we said, so he really wasn't listening."

The wild impulse to declare to Shiori that she'd had sex with Negi, a declaration bound to get a reaction from Fate, almost overpowered Sakurako. It was so very very tempting. Misa would totally have done it. But Misa would never have been in this situation in the first place, her common sense reminded her, and so she kept quiet.

Over at the desk, Fate brought his mug up to his lips, and then made a sour face. "Gone cold," he announced as he stood up.

"Would you like me to make you some more?" Shiori asked.

Fate paused a full second, evidence - not that anyone could have seen it - of how deeply the matter concerned him. Shiori had, intermittently over the years of their acquaintance, offered to make coffee for him on several occasions. She was, he supposed, quite talented at it - but never had she even once come close to duplicating the taste of the coffee her older sister had made for him. She'd been too young to remember the details of the recipe. And though he'd always tried his best to hide his disappointment, she had picked up on it nonetheless, and her own regret had been far more obvious and ... unpleasant to him. "That won't be ..." he began to say, then changed direction abruptly. "The coffee making tools on this side, they would be unfamiliar to you."

"It wouldn't be a problem, I'll have Sakurako-san to help me," she assured him. "Right?" she asked Sakurako.

"Uh ... yeah," Sakurako agreed.

The assurances he'd just heard failed to reassure him. However, Fate simply returned to his desk and his work, leaving the kitchen to the girls, who promptly got up and headed over there.

"I've actually had a bit of time to get used to this side's coffee tools," Shiori explained to Sakurako as she started getting things out and ready. "Unless there's something very new, here -"

Sakurako shrugged. "Can't go by me, I've never really been interested in how coffee is made."

"Oh, so you only drink it?"

"Not even that," Sakurako replied.

Shiori paused her preparations. "Do you prefer tea, then?"

"I prefer mango juice," the cheerleader explained.

Shiori was staring at her. "Well," she said, after a moment. "I'd suggest, then, that if you want to be close with Fate-san, you might want to get to liking coffee."

"Uh-huh," Sakurako said, nodding. "Right. All of you girls like coffee, then? And you liked it because Fate did."

"Yes, very much so." Shiori wasn't about to tell her the whole story, of course.

"And that got you absolutely nowhere, right?" Sakurako asked.

Shiori didn't answer.

"Maybe, instead of trying to change yourself, you should have tried to change him," she concluded.

Shiori opened her mouth to answer that this was not only an impossibility, but an absurdity ... then remembered that Negi-san had done so, and closed it again. "Let's make some coffee," she said instead.

"Do your friends look down on you, for your pact with Fate-san?" Shiori asked as she worked the burr grinder.

"Not really," Sakurako replied. "I got kind of a lecture from Misa when she found out, but I gave her as good as I got. We came to an understanding. I'm pretty sure that by now, most of them know, but nobody else has said anything." Of course, Haruna-chan practically never spoke to her at all. But Shiori didn't need to know that.

"Hm," Shiori said, sounding sympathetic. "It's not easy, having divided loyalties. The other girls were a little cold to me until they worked out that, since Fate-san and Negi-san were on the same side, now, I hadn't really ever betrayed anybody."

"Interesting mental gymnastics," Sakurako commented, as she ran the water from the tap momentarily, her fingers in it, then brought them up to her mouth to taste it. "Hmph," she said. "Bottled water will probably work better."

"You really think so?"

"Just a hunch."

Shiori promptly went over to the refrigerator and retrieved some of the bottled water that was there. "Well, the point I was trying to make was, I understand what it's like to have divided loyalties."

"Oh, good," Sakurako said, blinking. "... what's that like?"

Shiori's eyebrows went up. "You ... your own loyalties, between Neg-san and Fate-san, aren't they -"

"Oh," Sakurako interjected. "Ohhh. Uh ... Negi and I aren't like that. I don't have one with him."

"But ... you seemed so close," said Shiori, stunned seeming. (Yes, alliteration  _is_  wonderful.)

Sakurako shrugged. (See?) "He's like that with everybody," she lied.

"Huh," said Shiori, still stunned seeming, as she started measuring the coffee grounds into the brewer. "I never knew. Is he even like that with ...  _her_?"

"... gonna have to be a little more specific there, kiddo."

"Oh, yes, sorry. That mean Tatsumiya person."

"Ah," Sakurako said with a nod. "Yes, I bet she made something of an impression. I don't know her all that well, but she always seems pretty friendly to him, and he to her."

"He's amazing," Shiori mused, with the wonder of innocence.

"Yes he is," Sakurako agreed, with the wisdom of experience.

The coffee brewed for four minutes, a bit longer than usual, but then it was in the pot and ready to be served. Sakurako accompanied Shiori as she carried pot and mug over to Fate's desk. She poured it for him, and he took it up with a quiet word of thanks. Then, without any visible apprehension, he breathed in the fumes and -

Fate's eyes snapped open as the coffee came in contact with his tongue. He was tempted, strongly tempted to make an immediate exclamation. But he swallowed the coffee, and set it down, before turning to look at Shiori. "How?" he said then.

"It wasn't good?" Sakurako asked.

"It was very good," Fate said without looking at her. "But you said you couldn't remember."

"I couldn't," Shiori admitted, looking uncomfortable. "But that Nodoka person talked to me, asking about the kind of coffee you liked, and she used her book to read my mind, and showed me what she saw in there ... and it helped me figure some things out. But even then, I wasn't sure if it would work."

"Miyazaki?" he asked, almost hoarsely. Then he shook his head. "No, don't get distracted," he said to himself. "Vengeance later. You. What did you do?" he said to Sakurako.

"I didn't do anything," Sakurako protested. "I guess we just got lucky, or something. What is the big deal, anyway?"

In rather more time that it takes to say so, the big deal was explained to Sakurako.

"Wow," she said once this was accomplished. "You've really, really,  _really_  had it rough, haven't you?" she added, gazing at Shiori in what could only be called stupefaction.

"Well, that was a sad day, but, you know, it all worked out in the end," Shiori replied humbly.

"'It all worked out in the end'?" Sakurako repeated, almost incredulous. "When you say, in the end, do you mean when you went to work for the people who did that to you and your sister?"

"I  _prefer_  to think of it as going to work for the  _person_  who saved me from those people," Shiori said just a bit sharply. "But anyway, no, when I say, 'in the end', I guess that I mean 'now'. Things are all right, now."

"But what about your sister?" Sakurako asked.

Shiori looked away, silently.

"Well?" Sakurako prompted Fate, who'd been watching all this in silence.

"When Princess Asuna used the Code of the Lifemaker to cause all the living things which had been absorbed into Cosmo Entelekhia to resurrect," Fate began to explain after a moment, "there were ... certain souls which had been within it too long to be brought out. They had lived too long in the unending dream to ever return to reality in a sane and whole manner. Luna's sister, Sola, was one such. Her situation, and that of the other damaged souls, did much to convince me that the Mage of the Beginning, my maker, was no longer - if indeed he ever had been - a sane or rational being. For there can be no doubt that such would have been the fate of all absorbed by it, in time."

"Jeez, Fate," Sakurako said, shaking her head.

"He has nothing to do do with any of this," Fate said wryly.

"What?"

"Jeez. An abbreviation of the Greek translation of the Jewish name Yeshua, the inspiration of the Christian religion," he explained.

"... okay, I have no idea what you are talking about," Sakurako admitted.

"See what I have to put up with?" Fate asked Shiori.

"It was sort of an obscure joke, Fate-san," she pointed out gently. "But anyway, you must be very happy."

He actually blinked. "What are you talking abo-"

"You never complained about any of us, Fate-san. For you to be in a place where you complain so much, and still choose to be there, you must be so very very happy to be there." She smiled warmly, and just a bit sadly.

"Ariadne has given you some very strange ideas," Fate replied after a moment.

"Probably," she agreed.

Sakurako took a deep breath. "Fate. This hurts me more than it hurts you."

"Excuse me?"

She then whapped him upside the head, shrieked and clutched her wrist. "Sonuva - that wasn't supposed to be literal!" she cried.

"What in the world are you  _doing_?" he asked.

"She loves you, idiot!"

"What in the world are you  _saying_?" Fate semi-repeated as Shiori turned bright red and began vocalizing oddly.

Sakurako grabbed hold of her pigtails and let out a long, high-pitched growl as she yanked them. "Come on!" she said. "Are you so determined to be Negi's rival that you're going to voluntarily be even more oblivious than him? You're bordering on Haruna-levels of it, here!"

"... 'Haruna-levels'?" Fate said just a bit faintly. "Are we talking about a different 'Haruna' than Satome-san?"

"Oh my goodness," said Shiori, wide-eyed. "Are you the girl Haruna-san was telling me about back then, the one who has a crush on her but has never said anything about it out of uncharacteristic shyness on the subject? I thought she was talking about Nodoka-san!"

The stick figure which had been Sakurako up until a second ago made a strangled noise.

(Because the author lives for convoluted misunderstandings, Haruna had actually been talking about Yue.)

"This conversation, while disturbing on several levels, is utterly pointless," Fate declared. "Regardless of whatever notional feelings you are imputing to Shiori, likely out of a misguided imagination originating from your own deeply troubled romantic history -"

"Um," Shiori said very quietly.

Fate paid her no heed. "- your ideas are utterly ridiculous - no, I need a stronger term than that, but none comes to mind at the moment, so ridiculous will have to suffice - for the simple reason that -" Deeeep breath. "- I. Do not. Love."

"Bull pucky," said a Sakurako restored from stick figuredom.

"What in the world is 'bull pucky'?" Fate asked.

"It's payback for that crap about 'Jeez', that's what!" Sakurako retorted. "If you didn't love, you wouldn't have bothered to try and get the Fatettes - sorry, Shiori-san, I get that you don't like that name."

"That's all right," Shiori replied dazedly.

"Oh, good. - you wouldn't have bothered trying to get them to go to school instead of following you around, you'd have just told them to do what you wanted them to do without regard for their feelings. You wouldn't have them as a harem if you didn't have the ability to have compassion for other people, Fate! And you wouldn't have tried to reassure and comfort them that time if you didn't have it either!"

"I dispute that teasing them regarding my injuries is an actual act of compassion rather than subtle cruelty and why are you smiling at me like oh hell," he concluded.

"You. WERE. Listening!"

"Oh, my," said Shiori.

"I am riiight!" Sakurako said, dancing extemporaneously.

"Ohhhh, myyyyy," Shiori repeated, looking back and forth between Fate, looking more humiliated than she could ever remember him seeming, and Sakurako's jubilation.

"Your theoretical correctness in one matter does not necessarily indicate that you are correct in any other," Fate said after a moment.

"Uh-huh. Except that you pretending not to listen to people when they're talking around you also demonstrates an ability to empathize with someone else's desires for privacy," she replied, grinning maniacally. "It's more empathy. You empathize, you empathic empath, you!"

"Empathy in and of itself is not proof of -"

"Fate-san," Shiori interjected, very quietly, and yet in such a way as to stop Fate in mid-sentence nonetheless. "She's right about you. It's all right, you know? We've always believed that you were hiding a lot of concern for us in your cold behavior. The notion that you do love isn't really surprising." Her smile was exquisitely sad. "The notion that you love who you love ... well, that's a different matter. But I hope you'll be very happy."

"... huh?" said Sakurako.

"... huh?" said Fate.

"... just because you know I can't punch you without hurting myself doesn't give you the right to tempt me," Sakurako added, glaring at him.

"Yes," Shiori said, nodding. "You two are perfect for each other."

"As your absurd romanticism has clearly infected Shiori's mind, I certainly do have the right to tempt you!" Fate retorted to Sakurako.

As it happened, Sakurako wasn't really listening to him. "Wha-wha-wha-what?" she gasped, staring at Shiori. Then shook her head.

"Keep at it longer, something might actually start moving in there," Fate advised her.

Still not listening. "No, no, Shiori-san, you've got it all wrong," Sakurako told Shiori. "I'm not in love with Fate-kun! No, no, never in a million years! I mean, even if I didn't like girls better than boys - while still really liking boys," she hastened to add, it being important to clarify that subject. "Even then, I mean, Fate-kun? I'm just trying to get him to be less of a little jerk to everybody, and that's why I think that if he came to terms with how he felt about you -"

"If you didn't care about him," Shiori interjected, quietly but forcefully, "then you wouldn't care whether he was a little jerk to everybody."

"Sure I would!" Sakurako insisted. "Everybody includes me!"

Shiori was smiling, now, smiling sadly but still smiling. "But you're not doing it for such selfish reasons, are you? You said, when we spoke in my cell, that you thought he was lonely."

"That's dirty pool, bringing our private conversation into a not-private one like this!"

"If you didn't care about him, you wouldn't care whether a little jerk was lonely or not," she concluded, then turned to look at Fate, who'd been regarding all this with a blank expression. "And Fate-san ... I've never seen you acting the way that you act towards Sakurako-san. She is clearly a very special person to you. I admit, I'm sad ... I've dreamed about you choosing me as a special person. And sometimes I've dreamed about you and Negi-san and ... well, those are different kinds of dreams, and I'm sure that you don't want to hear about them."

"No," Fate agreed, shaking his head.

"But I hope the two of you will be very happy together," she said, smiling winsomely.

"Aggggh!" Sakurako cried, rubbing her forehead frantically. "This is so so so messed up! You want to be with Fate, and I want you to be with Fate, and Fate wants ... oh, I don't even know what you want! No, wait a minute, what do you want?" she demanded abruptly.

Fate stared at her, then lifted his head to stare at the ceiling. "I blame Negi-kun."

"That's not an answer, and don't say it's just not an answer that I like because that is so unbelievably annoying when people  _do_  that!"

Fate shrugged.

"Okay. Fine then. There's only one solution to this problem. Shiori-san. Do you like girls?" Sakurako asked intently.

"... well, I don't dislike them, for the most part," said the girl from the largest girl's school on her planet.

"Fine, then," Sakurako said, clapping her hands. "Itadakimasu." And she lunged forward to plant a fierce kiss on Shiori's lips. It went on for several minutes as Fate stared with the gravely stoic stare of an amazed Averruncus.

Then Sakurako pulled back from a vaguely blissed-out looking Shiori, and turned to glare at him. "Get your damned pills!"

* * *

A few moments later, in Fate's bedroom (of which he had heretofore only used the closet), Sakurako was naked - well, except for her socks - and kneeling on the bed.

And Shiori was naked - except for her gossamer thin top - and kneeling on the bed with an expression best termed "terrified excitement" on her face.

And Fate was, yes, naked - really this time - and sitting on the bed facing the two of them and aged up to around fifteen and looking disgusted. "This is an extraordinarily terrible idea," he said once the silence had gone on long enough, in his opinion.

"Don't look so disgusted, you jerk!" Sakurako snapped. "There are two really pretty hot chicks here, if I do say so myself, and so you have no right to be so darn disgusted! Right, Shiori-san?"

"IIIIIIIIIII," said Shiori.

"That meant yes in girl code!" Sakurako added quickly.

"Regardless of any rights or the lack thereof," Fate replied sourly, "it should be fairly obvious to everyone present that the delightful femininity displayed before me has left me unmoved." And indeed, his member was ... well, not  _soft_  since Fate didn't really have any softness, but certainly flaccid.

"That's just because nothing sexy has happened yet," Sakurako retorted. "Once we get started, things will be different. You don't mind if I go first, do you, Shiori-san?"

"IIIIIIIIIII," said Shiori.

"That meant no in girl code."

"It sounded remarkably identical to 'yes' in this alleged code," Fate observed.

"It's in the inflections! Shut up!" she snapped as she bent down to look right at the flaccid member. "Okay, Shiori-san, pay attention to what I'm doing, because it's going to be your turn when I'm done. It's a relatively simple process, but it's important to get it right. Okay?"

"IIIIIIIIIII."

"Which one was that?"

"It was 'thank you Sakurako-sama'," she told him, then took a deep breath before reaching out to wrap her right hand around his dick. It was, she noted, smaller than Negi's. "Okay, you start out rubbing it with your hand," she narrated for Shiori's benefit. "Often it's better to put a little moisture on your hands, so that you start with a bit of lubrication, but right now, my hands are sweaty enough that it's not necessary, and it probably won't be necessary for you, either. And anyway, once you get on to the next bit, you'll have all the lubrication you could possibly need. By which, I mean, well, this." She took another deep breath ... and bent down to take Fate in her mouth.

 _Blech!_  she thought. And,  _how are you supposed to tell someone that their cock tastes terrible?!_

Well, that was a question which nobody present would be able to answer for her, so Sakurako just kept on going, even though the thought of eating her dinner after an unwashed yak had been sitting on it for a while was more appetizing to her than this. She was definitely going to ask Misa about it as a theoretical later, though. Misa would definitely know how to tell someone that their dick tasted sucky. Admittedly, Misa would also probably think it was perfectly okay to just  _tell_  them, so ... well, at least thinking about this helped to sort of distract her from the taste of pure evil in her mouth at the moment.

However, her selfless sacrifice of her precious taste buds was not in vain! Fate's dick was no longer flaccid - his body obeyed most of the same principles as that of a human male, and the human male's genitive organ will automatically respond to certain stimuli. It wasn't  _erect_ , exactly, but it was sufficiently aroused to serve the purpose. And now it was time for the educational portion of the afternoon's entertainment to resume.

"Okay!" said Sakurako as she pulled back, smiling widely - and why not, the horror was over for  _her_. "You followed along with all that, right, Shiori-san?"

"IIIIIIIIIII," said Shiori.

"Well, now it's your turn," Sakurako said ... and then was struck by a wave of that unfamiliar emotion, guilt. What was she doing, asking her new friend to do something she wouldn't willingly do again? And even worse, making it so that her first experience with the joy of oral sex was with ... that? It would probably scar the poor, sweet, vulnerable girl for life! No, that was the act of a heel! The least scrupulous people Sakurako knew wouldn't do something like that. (Okay, so Haruna probably would, actually, but Sakurako idealized her somewhat.) "Or, you know, if you're not ready, we don't have to do anything if you don't - wow, now  _I'm_  doing it. Anyway, you don't -"

"IIIIIIIIIII!" said Shiori, and this time there actually was a bit of inflection in the tone. The girl then seemed to fall face first towards Fate's feet from a seated position, and crawled up his legs until she was faced with his dick, which she promptly wrapped both hands around and began jerking ferociously.

"Uh ... okay, I guess you do want to and - oh, gosh, you're a quick learner," she added as Shiori moved on to sucking what she'd been rubbing until now, pausing occasionally to give soulful looks up at Fate as she otherwise bobbed quite vigorously back and forth.

Sakurako stared at her. "My gosh, she actually likes it," she said.

"My gosh, it's almost like you're suggesting that you personally find the taste of my technically non-living tissues less than app-" Fate started to remark. Sakurako shut him up with the most easily available method. Well, technically, she supposed that she could have parked her hindquarters on his face and demanded payback, but kissing him was easier and anyway  _why why why was someone who tasted so horrible such a great damn kisser!_

It was wrong on so many levels, and the sheer wrongness finally drove her to demand an explanation. "How are you so good at kissing, anyway?" she hissed, hoping that Shiori was sufficiently distracted by what she was doing that she wouldn't hear her.

"I downloaded a program on the subject some time ago," he answered in a tone of bland indifference.

"Like how long ago?" she asked.

"When I began establishing my network of associates, of cou-"

"So you kissed all those girls?" Sakurako shrieked quietly.

"... a gentleman never discusses such matters."

"I thought you made pactios by ... I don't know, exchanging blood or something!"

"My blood would make any individual into whom it was transfused sick unto death. Kissing was the only resort."

"So you've kissed Shiori-san before this, then?"

"IIIIIIIIIII," said Shiori.

"I begin to perceive the inflections involved," Fate remarked.

Sakurako blinked. Why had Shiori's voice seemed to come from a different direction than she'd expected? She turned around and her eyes got very wide as she saw the other girl kneeling astride Fate's hips, holding his member with one hand as she brought it into contact with her vulva.

"W-wait a second," Sakurako stammered. "How do you know what to -"

Shiori dropped down and the dick went up into her.

"IIIIIIIIIII!" said Shiori, grinning blissfully, tears flowing down her face.

"'We're one, Fate-san,'" Sakurako translated woodenly.

"I do not believe in a girl code which can handle such complicated messages," Fate informed her, unmoved by any of this.

"Neither do I," Sakurako admitted as Shiori began to rock back and forth.

It didn't take terribly long for Shiori to pass from extended monosyllables to babbling nonsense as she proceeded to have sex with Fate. Sakurako expected that it was really only nonsense because she didn't know whatever language Shiori happened to be using at the moment, probably her native tongue or at least the language of her childhood judging by the frequent appearance of the word "Sola" in it, which Sakurako happened to remember as being the name of the girl's older sister. Which was kind of a weird thing to show up in dirty talk, but whatever.

'Whatever' was certainly Fate's reaction to what Shiori was saying, showing no emotion as he was ridden. (Rode?) His face didn't change, his expression stayed the same, and he offered no response. At least, he offered none until he let out a noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a grunt, at which point all the babble from Shiori ceased abruptly as she grew tense before releasing one last, particularly high-pitched "IIIIIIII!"

"'I'm cumming'," Sakurako helpfully translated.

"You too?" Fate asked.

"Don't be a smartass," she said as she got up to help the semi-paralyzed giggling girl down off of Fate's flagging member. The girl looked so happy. Sakurako wondered if that had been what she looked like the first time she had sex. She frankly doubted it. Well, it couldn't be helped. She smiled a bit sadly and kissed Shiori's forehead as the girl nestled up against her.

"I will require some time to recuperate my forces before I attend to your needs," Fate announced.

"Or you could just start licking me."

"... ah. Yes."

"It never even occurred to you, did it?" she said as she turned to half-glare at him.

"The programs -"

"- were written by a guy, weren't they?"

"... so it would seem," Fate agreed as he rolled over onto his stomach, and - somehow managing to make the act look surprisingly dignified - crawled over between her legs and began the assigned task, which - she was somewhat disgusted to realize - he actually did quite well.

* * *

_Meanwhile ..._

Actually, maybe a little bit earlier ...

Or was it later after all?

... meh.

Having joined the mile high club and learned once again that one should never,  _never_  underestimate the quiet ones, Negi half-walked, half-stumbled out of the Chao Bao Zi's car a few moments after it settled safely to the ground. He felt slightly tempted to fall down to the ground and start kissing it, or possibly even doing an oration in praise of its solidity. In fact, Negi was now determined to never give into the impulse to try doing any of that sort of thing while riding his wand, no matter how much anyone begged.

"Are you all right?" Satsuki asked from the door.

"Fine, fine," he assured her, since it was his own problem and he didn't want anyone else worried about him. And it was really not a problem, after all. "Um, well, I would love to stay and enjoy some of your delightful cooking -"

"But you've eaten enough?" she asked, smiling a bit.

 _Never, never, never underestimate._  "Ahem. But I really have to be going, I need to speak with Satomi-san as soon as possible. And since I hope she'll be in her lab -"

"So you're not going to the surprise party?" Satsuki asked.

Negi blinked. "There's a surprise party?"

"... surprise?" she said. "Apparently, Makie-san thought that the earlier party wasn't enough, so she's having another one for Asuna in Evangeline's resort ... wherever that is." She shrugged. "When Fate cancelled class, she invited everyone, but I was planning to work and ... well, I expected that it was going to be one of those kind of parties, and so ..." She trailed off, blushing a bit, and shrugged.

"Ah," he said, nodding understanding. "Well ... would you like to come now?"

Now Satsuki blinked. "But ... weren't you going to go talk to Hakase as soon as -"

"It'll be all right. Master's resort is time shifted, so an day inside is an hour outside. We can attend the party and be back here or wherever else in an hour."

"That's amazing," she said ... then shook her head. "I still don't think so."

"Why not? I thought you would -"

"Yes, it was wonderful, Negi," she told him. "And now ... now I understand that I can have that kind of happiness, I'm going to look for it ... but ... I want that happiness to come from someone who wants to be with me more than anyone else. And I'm not going to find that, I think, on the path that you're following. Maybe you can find the happiness you want on that path. I don't know. And it doesn't matter. I can't walk your path for you, and you can't walk your path for me. And that's the way it is." She nodded in conclusion.

"Yes," Negi said, nodding. "I hope you find what you're looking for, Satsuki."

"And I hope you do, too. Because you deserve whatever tiny morsel of happiness you can find in the life you've chosen for yourself, Negi. Please believe that."

He took a deep breath. "I'll try," he told her, and then he was gone.

Generally speaking, it's a bad idea to run and think deeply on anything other than running. Despite being an accomplished multitasker, Negi was well aware of this, and usually focused on his surroundings on those occasions when he was forced into a mad dash across the school district, like he was at the moment. However, he was also in a somewhat reflective mood at the moment, and so other thoughts came somewhat unwillingly into his mind.

 _My path,_  he reflected as he ran.  _And no one else can walk it for me. But the truth is, I've been allowing other people to choose the path that I'm walking, and ... no, I haven't liked the results. I may not be able to change my personality, so I'm probably going to continue to be influenced by others even after this. But I'm going to make some changes in my life, starting today._

_Makie ..._

Before he could continue that thought, he heard the bell-like non-noise that indicated an incoming communication, and slowed to a stop.  _Yes?_  he sent.

 _Negi, are you already at Hakase's lab?_  asked Asuna's mind voice.

_No, I -_

_Good. They're throwing a surprise party for us at Evangeline's resort, and I need you to come here and pretend to be surprised._

_... amazingly, that's what I was doing anyway. Satsuki told me about it._

_Satsuki?_  Asuna's voice repeated.  _Not - **oh my my my!**_

He flushed a bit at the amazement in her tone.  _Yes, well, she's not coming with me, but she did tell me about this affair. Um. Is Makie there?_

_Misora and I haven't gone in myself yet, but I think this was her idea, so yes, she's definitely here._

_Misora and - oh my my my._

_Oh, cut it out, that's only cute when I do it. Anyway, get over here, ASAP._

_On my way,_  he confirmed, and started running again.

Makie was there. He was going to get her alone, explain the whole truth to her, and get her to understand his changed perspective on matters. Then they would both leave that place, pursuing a course of chastity thereafter. The plan was simple and well-considered. It couldn't possibly fail.

* * *

"AAAAAHHHH!" Makie howled as she bounced, tiny breasts shaking, up and down on the lap of her partner. "Yes, yes, fuck me, Yuna's dad, fuck me, fuck me haaaard!"

"He's got a name, you know," Yuna glowered as she ran a finger down Makie's spine to her butt, and then inwards.

"EEE!" the pink-haired girl cried out, then giggled softly. "I'm sowwwy, Yuna-chwan! It's just so naughty to think of him as Yuna's dad! But to make up for it, you can fuck Kagehi when he shows up and call him 'Makie's little brother' instead of his name!" She pursed her lips as she gazed adoringly at her friend.

"Well," Yuna said reluctantly as she continued to sodomize Makie with her fingers. "That does sound kind of cool."

"Cough, cough," coughed Yuna's dad, less than thrilled about the discussion concerning Makie's little brother.

"Quiet, Yuna's dad, or I won't let you bang Ako, later."

As Akashi-sensei fell silent, whether because he considered this a credible threat or because he was thrown off by it, Makie giggled some more. "Ride his face, Yuna-chan! Ride his face, so I can get my face in your sweet big tits!"

"Oh, you sweet talker, you."

"... surprise," said Asuna to the cardboard cutouts of Negi and Misora standing beside her.

Elsewhere, bacchanalia reigned. Ako and Konoka were discussing medicine as they sat naked on poolside deck chairs. (Bacchanalia doesn't just mean sex, you know, it means  _pleasure_. And there are such things as intellectual pleasures.) Between them, Madoka and Misa were taking Setsuna vaginally and anally with strap-ons. (Misa was a bit more enthusiastic about this than Madoka, who found herself wishing that there were more guys here, or at least that some of those that were there weren't off-limits.) Over in the corner, Natsumi and Kotaro were getting busy in front of a bound and gagged Chizuru, who was attached to some sort of machine that was driving a dildo into her. Anytime any of the girls even looked like they were looking at Kotaro, Natsumi would start growling and hissing. (Hence 'off-limits'.)

Elsewhere, on the far side of the pool, Kazumi and Ayaka were comparing breast sizes and incidentally kissing and licking each other, while Sayo sat back and quietly masturbated while not watching. Yue, Kaede, Ku Fei and Nodoka were in a daisy chain while Haruna was being assaulted, after a fashion, by the Narutaki sisters. Chisame and Chachamaru were watching all this from chairs, occasionally exchanging kisses as they did so.

"Her brother isn't actually coming here, is he?" Negi weakly asked once he stopped being a cardboard cutout.

"Relax, it's been taken care of," Asuna whispered into his ear.

* * *

"Wow, this is such a cool game, sensei!" Sasaki Kagehisa enthused as his fingers worked the controller's buttons while staring wide-eyed at the TV screen.

"I'm glad you like it," Takahata told him. Evangeline had recommended this one, which had been oddly helpful, since he had no interest in or knowledge of the subject.

"Are you sure my big sister won't mind me not showing up to whatever thing she wanted me to visit?" Kagehisa asked without looking back at him.

"I suspect she'll probably have just as much fun without you," the teacher said dryly.

The irony of luring a young boy with video games in order to prevent him from being sexually assaulted appealed to Takahata on some level.

* * *

"I'm very grateful, Asuna," Negi said, eyes closed. "But even so ... this is a lot to take in. Do you think it would be possible for me to make a discreet exit from this affair, before anyone notices that I'm here and I'm drawn into oh dammit you've taken my clothes off again without me realizing it, haven't you?" he asked, opening his eyes.

"But how'd you do mine at the same time?" Misora asked incredulously. Granted, she'd only been wearing her bra and panties, but still!

"I am just that awesome," replied Asuna as she gently maneuvered the incredulous and thus not-really-in any-state-to-resist-being-maneuvered Misora to the floor. "Okay, then, Negi, we're almost done with the corrupt the whole class project, since you've done it with Satsuki now and you're probably going to end up doing it with Satomi once you meet with her -"

"The sad thing is, I can't even argue with your reasoning," Negi admitted.

"You could certainly try!" shouted Misora, who could guess where this was going.

Asuna continued as though there had been no interruptions. "- the next step is to do it with everybody's favorite vaguely cowardly nun." She proceeded to spread Misora's legs with her ankles as she sat behind her. "Let's get on with the getting it on!"

Negi sighed. "Misora-san, I hope you understand that we don't have to do anything if you don't want to," he said, pronouncing the words of the cliche almost casually.

"Really?" Misora asked quickly. "Great! I don't want to!" She began trying to close her legs, but Asuna's ankles kept them spread open.

"Misora, we talked about this," said Asuna with a frown, not noticing the look of transcendent joy which had just settled on Negi's face.

"We talked," Misora reminded her, "about so many things! Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings!"

"... what?" asked Asuna.

"Asuna," Negi said mildly. "If she doesn't want to do anything, we don't have to do it." He was holding back from engaging in extemporaneous dance with difficulty.

"Yes, we do," Asuna objected.

"No," said Negi. "We don't." He gently reached out to lift Asuna's feet out of the way so that Misora could close her legs, which she promptly did with a grateful expression on her face.

"Negiiiii," Asuna groaned. "This is an orgy, for Pete's sake!"

"Yeah, and I'm going to go and uh, uh, uh, have sex with Chisame-chan!" Misora quickly supplied. "Hey, Chisame!" she called out. "How'd you like to have sex with me?"

"Whatever," came the reply.

"Listen to the enthusiasm in her voice!" Misora said to Asuna. "It's like she's acknowledging our deep archetypical links, between a mischievous chick like me and a tsundere like her!"

Asakura pulled back from Ayaka at that moment, looking a bit confused, but Ayaka didn't let her go immediately.

Asuna rolled her eyes, but let go of Misora at another look from Negi. The rather soiled nun promptly got up, bowed politely in Negi's direction and ran off to join Chisame and Chachamaru.

"You're too nice, you know that?" Asuna griped.

"The cliche finally worked!" he replied in a total non sequitur, grinning like a maniac.

"Dammit all anyway," said Asuna with a shrug, and prepared to jump him. In the last pre-jump moment, however, she was interrupted by a delicate cough from behind her. Asuna quickly glanced over her shoulder, and blinked a bit at the somewhat familiar sight of Asakura with Sayo standing a bit behind her, looking nervous - the key difference from the norm being that Sayo wasn't floating over Asakura's shoulder, but standing behind it. (And the whole 'both stark naked' thing, but that sort of went without saying.)

"'Scuse me," said Asakura, grinning foxily. "We were kind of hoping -"

"Isn't this supposed to be my surprise party?" Asuna asked, eyebrow raised.

"Yes, but you, knocking boots with Negi? Not really all that surprising," Asakura pointed out.

"She has a point," Negi observed.

Asuna let out a sigh. "Okay," she said, and stepped back to clear a path to him.

"Oh, thank you, Asuna-san," said Sayo, stepping quickly out from behind Asakura and darting towards Negi - only to pause, take a deep breath, and hug Asuna firmly. "I'm so sorry about all of this," she said. "It's all my fault, I know, and if I'd known what was going to happen, I'd have stayed asleep forever!"

Asuna blinked, for once genuinely startled. "That's ... it's, it's okay, Sayo-chan," she assured her. "I wouldn't want you to ..." She trailed off, then shook her head. "All that it means is that, if you'd stayed asleep, it would have happened a little later," she continued, hands coming up to hug the other girl back. "And you deserve to live and be happy, just as much as I do." She ran her fingers down the other girl's long white hair. "Don't worry. It'll be okay," she said.

"Really?" Sayo asked. "You're not just saying that to try and lull me into sex with you, are you?"

"... little bit."

Sigh. "That's what I thought," said the ex-ghost, stepping back with a slightly rueful look on her face. "I don't do that sort of thing, Asuna-san."

"Eh, it figures that there'd be at least two in the class," Asuna said with a mischievous smile worthy of Asakura herself. "Well, then, Negi's waiting, so -"

They turned to see that Asakura was in fact presently perched over Negi's form, his mouth bent up to her crotch as she licked and rubbed at his member. She paused to look up. "What?" she asked, all innocence. "I'm just getting him ready for you, Sayo."

"Oh, come on, who's going to be-" Asuna started to say in a disgusted manner.

"Thank you so much, Asakura!" cried Sayo, in such a way as would have a heart as punctuation if it were in a word balloon. While Asuna rolled her eyes in annoyance, Sayo quickly dropped down and crawled over to mount Negi's negi, facing Asakura as the other girl rode his face. Not that Sayo could see her as she was impeded by having her eyes closed. "Oh, Negi, it feels so good to be with you again!" she cried some more. "It's been so long!"

"Has it really been that long?" Negi asked. This time, let's forebear from representing the mumbled things he actually said and communicate his intended expression, all right?

Because Sayo clearly grasped that meaning, as shown by her prompt response as she bucked and rode on Negi, hands coming up to caress her own breasts as she did so. "No, not really, but it felt that way. I've felt so hollow without you inside of me! Like I was back to being a ghost, almost. Oh, oh, oh, you do that so wonderfully, Negi!"

Asakura's eyes, it should be noted, were not closed. And her position on Negi's face meant that she was getting the full force of Sayo's gestures, meant to present allure to Negi. They were working. Well, they, and the sensation of Negi's tongue on her cunny, were working. "Oh, God, Sayo, you're so beautiful," Asakura gasped.

Sayo's eyes came open a bit. "Really?" she peeped.

"Reeeeally!"

"You're so much more beautiful than I am, though," Sayo said very quietly. "And strong, and clever, and -"

"Oh, come on," said Asuna, watching all this, annoyed at the fact that she was doing this instead of having sex at  _her_  surprise sex party and also annoyed because she knew where this was going to go.

They ignored her. "But you're sweet, and kind, and lovely and - and -"

"Kazumiiii," Sayo cried out as Negi thrust up into her just so. Then, much more quietly, she said those three little words. "If it's you -"

Before the other three little words could be said, Asakura lunged forward to press her lips against Sayo's lips. They kissed frantically as Asakura pulled herself off of Negi's face and down his chest to press up against Sayo, holding her tightly.

"Uh?" said Negi as he looked up.

"Fuck us, Negi!" Asakura cried out as she looked back at him. "Fuck us hard!"

He obliged her request.

"Oooh!" said Konoka as she stood beside Asuna. "I was really looking forward to be the one who was going to convert her!"

"Yeah, wait, what?" said Asuna as she looked around and saw that just about everybody had come up to watch beside her. "Come on, is this really that fascinating?"

"Wow," said Natsumi. "It almost makes me want to -"

"Ah, ah ah ah ah!" cried Madoka where she was getting banged by Kotaro.

"Could someone please untie me?" mumbled Chizuru. Again, no point in trying to represent her mumbles.

And then, having fucked Sayo and Asakura while they kissed and caressed each other - having gone so far, in fact, as to do the hyperspeed trick of penetrating each of them in turn so rapidly that to all observers, including the two girls, it seemed that he was penetrating them at the same time, much to their amazement - and brought them both to multiple orgasms before achieving his own climax, which he released onto both their sweaty and excited forms, he turned to look at the circle of excited and amazed looking girls (and Akashi-sensei) and said, "All right. Who's next?"

He was promptly mobbed.

It had been said, many times now, that Negi could go for hours. It was true. And he did so now. He fucked, screwed, debauched, copulated, laid, made out, mated, and otherwise had sex with each and every one of the girls - with the notable exceptions of Misora, who managed to elude him, and Chizuru, whom Natsumi insisted (as she mounted him) was still being punished. (Natsumi seemed somewhat oblivious as she said this that Kotaro was in the midst of a certain trio of library girls. On the other hand, maybe she knew and was looking forward to punishing him and them. She had some disturbing tendencies, did Natsumi.)

And the girls were getting busy with each other, as well, in startling and surprising combinations. Well, perhaps not really all that surprising, Negi mused as he pounded into Kaede while she gamahuched Fei, while watching Ako being brought shrieking to orgasm by Misa and Madoka, while Makie and Yue were in a - you knew it was coming - sexually charged sixty-nine. That would have been surprising, perhaps, to anyone who didn't know about the odd pact that the two had made during the last battle, and what had come later. In a way, that had been the start of the whole thing, hadn't it?

Well, no. It had started with Asuna, who was -

Wait - where was Asuna?

Oh, there she was, sitting with Ayaka, doubtless resting for a while, her head on the class rep's shoulder, hands entwined. It was really sort of sweet.

... he had to save her.

But there was time for that. Right now, as he shuddered out the most recent of many climaxes, he was finally feeling like taking a bit of a break himself.

"Oh, I do hope you weren't planning on taking a break or something like that," cooed a familiar voice.

Negi painted on a smile, and rolled over to look up at Evangeline, who was giving him a smile he knew to be just as false. "No, of course not, Master," he told her. "I'm ready whenever you are."

"Well, good. I guess you really have given up, then," she said.

He blinked. "What are you talking about?"

"Your plan. You've abandoned it for senseless hedonism."

"What? No. I'm going to go right to Satomi-san's lab as soon as the day here is over, and -"

"Oh," said Evangeline, blinking. "Oh, right. I didn't actually tell you about that. Yeah, I changed the resort's time distortion. Wow, this is embarrassing. Really messes up the whole 'bathe in the waters of depravity' spiel I was going to give if you don't -"

"Master? What do you mean you changed the resort's time distortion?" Negi asked very quietly.

"An hour inside is an hour outside, now," she told him.

Negi stared.

"I'm evil," she reminded him.

"AGGGGGGGGGGH!"

A few moments later, as Negi was frantically dressing, Makie ran up to him with a confused look on her face. "Negiii? Where are you going?"

"To Satomi-san's lab!" he told her as he straightened his tie. "The last phase of my plan to save Asuna and the Magical World depend on her, and I'm - oh, good grief, it's after midnight, she'll probably be asleep! I'm going to have to wake her up, and she'll probably be dazed, and -"

"Then why not stay here until morning?" she asked. "There's still so many combinations we haven't tried yet! I really want to get taken by both you and Yuna's dad, front and back, like you did to her," she confided.

"No, I, I really need to focus on the plan right now, Makie," he told her while tying his shoes.

"... do you not like me any more?" Makie nearly whimpered.

Negi lifted his head and looked right at her as he prepared to tell her the truth.

"Negi?" she asked when he hadn't said anything for a moment.

"No, of course that's not true," he said, then, with total sincerity. "I like you very, very much, Makie. But ... I mean, the whole Magical World. And Asuna. So ... I, I've got to go!"

And with that, he proceeded to do so, dashing out of the resort's exit.

"Poot," said Makie, somehow vaguely aware that she'd just gotten dumped without really realizing it. She looked around a bit crabbily. "Why didn't Kagehi ever show up?" she wondered aloud.

* * *

Kagehisa, at the moment, was fast asleep and being carried on Takamichi's back over to the dormitory of the elementary boy's school where he lived.

The boy didn't weigh very much at all, especially not when compared to the weight of Takamichi's concerns as he reflected on a conversation he'd had with Evangeline just before he'd left her cottage.

"Oh, bravo," she'd said as she saw Kagehisa nodding off in front of the TV. "You've protected the boy from the seductive wiles of his older sister. Well done. My congratulations. Really, I'm impressed."

"I sense this is leading up to something," he'd replied.

"Well spotted! You've protected him ... today. Are you going to do it for the rest of his life?"

He still didn't have an answer to that.

* * *

Just a few minutes later, Negi found himself outside the door of Hakase's private laboratory, hesitantly knocking on it. He supposed that he wasn't really making a lot of noise, that it was just his imagination that the knocks - as the only sound in the hallway - sounded terribly loud. Really, he needed to get a better handle on his imagination.

The door promptly opened a crack, and Hakase peered out of it up at him. "Oh, Sensei," she said, sounding a bit surprised.

"Hello, Hakase-san," he said. "I'm very sorry to wake you -"

"You didn't wake me," she told him, blinking. "Lately I've been staying up 'til around two in the morning."

Now Negi blinked. "Really? I don't think I can approve of that as your tea-" He broke off, abruptly. "But I'm not your teacher, anymore," he reminded himself, after a moment.

"... I wasn't going to say it," she told him.

"But it's true."

Satomi shrugged. "Things change. Would you like to come in?"

"Yes, please," he said, and stepped through the doorway into the lab. It looked much like it had the last time he'd visited, when he'd come along to watch Chachamaru's check-up a few months ago. Some of the technology had changed, and he now recognized a lot more of it, enough to find it interesting rather than confusing. But Negi refused to allow himself to get distracted.

"All right then, let me get right to the point," he said, turning back to face Satomi - in time to be startled by how up close she was while examining him. "Ahem. I, uh, expect that you're already well aware of the situation that currently faces us, thanks to Chachamaru."

"Yes, she's kept me in the loop concerning your situation, Asuna-san's situation, and the unfolding crisis of the Martian consensual shared hallucination," the scientist answered. "As well as a few details about your ... personal situation," she added, neither smiling nor frowning.

"Ah. Yes, of course."

"I do hope you're treating my daughter right," she said.

"I'm doing my very best," he said, flushing a bit. "But that's not ... ahem. Hakase-san, I need your help to resolve the crisis that you mentioned."

She stared a bit owlishly at him. "... well, I'm flattered that you'd think of me, but I'm genuinely at a loss to understand what you think I can do. I'm certainly a genius, but I can't imagine what you think I can bring to the problem that you don't already -"

"No one else knew Chao-san like you did, and that's the key to this problem," he told her. "And so I'm hoping that -"

His interruption was abruptly interrupted by a brilliant flash of light from the corner of the laboratory, leaving them both temporarily blinded. As the spots before his eyes faded, Negi turned to see what had caused it.

Standing there, back to him, was a familiar form, wearing a familiar, damaged set of armor. And then, in the silence that followed, the girl began to speak in Mandarin, quietly. (For those curious, this was more or less what she said: "One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.") Having concluded her oration, she began to undo the fastening of her armor at the neck.

"Chao-san?" Negi gasped.

She paused, turned to look at him. "Aru?" she said, going slightly cross-eyed at the sight before her. "Wait, what are you two doing here?" Then she looked around, somewhat frantically. "What, what am  _I_ doing here? This isn't my lab!" Eyes back to Negi. "When is this?"

"A few months after you left," he told her.

She stared at him. "...  _what did you do?_ " Chao Lingshen demanded.

**To Be Continued.**


	17. Satomi, Chao

Don't you just hate it when the first few minutes of a new episode of a TV series are taken up with the last few minutes of the previous episode? I mean, hello, TV people, do you think our memories are that bad? Do you think your stories are that unmemorable? What is your problem, TV people? What is your deal?

Anyway.

"Chao-san?" Negi gasped.

She paused, turned to look at him. "Aru?" she said, going slightly cross-eyed at the sight before her. "Wait, what are you two doing here?" Then she looked around, somewhat frantically. "What, what am I doing here? This isn't my lab!" Eyes back to Negi. "When is this?"

"A few months after you left," he told her.

She stared at him. "...  _what did you do?_ " Chao Lingshen demanded.

"Uh," Negi replied. To his credit, that was a more coherent response than Satomi had made, as she was just gaping, mouth open about as wide as her eyes.

"And what are  _you_  even doing in this time period, anyway?" she continued, growing ever more irate with each passing moment. "Do you have any idea how dangerous it'd be if you ran into the Negi-kun who lives in this era?"

"I am the Negi-kun who lives in this era!" protested the Negi-kun who lived in this era.

Chao blinked, looked him up and down. "Age distortion pills?" she guessed.

"Well, yes, but it's actually a much more complicated situation than that," he began to explain.

"Don't care," said Chao rather brusquely.

"But you'll probably need to know it if you want to understand the situation we're in," Negi persisted, as he watched Chao start to ignore him, preferring to look around the laboratory with vague interest. "You see, uh, well, to make a long story short, I need your help, Chao-san."

 _That_  got her attention, unfortunately. She turned to look at him with an incredulous and very irritated expression, then turned to look at Satomi. "He needs my help!" she announced.

"Chao!" Satomi finally said, eyes watery. "I, I never really thought I'd see you again, and -"

"Oh, come on, I know it was longer ago for you than it was for me, but have you completely forgotten the whole speech about how sentiment has no place in a scientist's considerations  _already_?" Chao snapped.

"But -" said Satomi.

"But -" said Negi.

"Know what I need?" she continued, turning back to glare at Negi. "I need a few hours in my sweet home with my cute pets and big library and zero-gravity jacuzzi in order to rest from a rather difficult battle with  _a certain person_. And I definitely don't need to spend any more time than I absolutely have to in this crazy era thanks to that  _certain person_!"

"But it's not my fault!" Negi protested. Seeing her looking at him with obvious disbelief, he pressed on. "Okay, this clearly wasn't where you were expecting to appear. Where were you planning to appear?"

"Like I said, in my laboratory in -" The time traveler broke off, then continued. "- a certain future era, where I was going to make modifications to my Cassiopeia so that it could make the big jump the rest of the way home. It's not calibrated for that leap at the moment, and I can't get the parts that I need in this era, and ..." Chao paused, took a deep breath. "Okay, on the whole, I guess I was sort of over-reacting. I'm not sure why the Cassiopeia was drawn here instead of to the next time that the World Tree's radiance reaches its peak levels, but I suppose that there's no way that you could have influenced that cycle and why are you suddenly looking so guilty, Negi-kun?"

"Um ... well, you see -" he began to explain.

" _You **killed**  the World Tree?_" Chao shrieked a moment or so later.

"It's not dead yet!" Negi protested, then flinched. "When I say it like it like that, it sounds really bad, doesn't it?"

Chao was too busy sputtering incoherently to reply to that, so Satomi generously stepped in to assist. "I think Chao is trying to say that there's no good way to say that, as such."

"Yes, that is a good summary!" Chao said. "How am I supposed to make the jaunt to the period where I can get the tools I need, now?"

"Well, I suppose you could view that as an incentive to help me out with the plan I've developed," Negi suggested, with a smile meant to be endearing.

"He's asking for my help again," she said to Satomi. "No, he's extorting my help! Evangeline has certainly taught you well," she said, returning her glare to Negi.

"Thank you."

"NOT. A compliment!"

"In any event," Negi continued smoothly, "I'm not extorting anything. If you refuse to help me out or even give the same consideration to my plans that I was certainly willing to give yours, then I'll accept that and try to accomplish my goals without your assistance. As to your situation, while your help would help me to help you, I can certainly make some suggestions for solutions to your problems that you can accomplish without my help."

"Such as what?" Chao asked suspiciously.

"Well, you could travel through time the long way to the period in question."

Chao stared at him.

"And think about all the fun we could have, you'd be able to be with all your friends, and maybe work towards becoming a Magister Magi with me and ugh urk urk," he continued as her hands closed around his throat.

After a few moments of pointless throttling, Chao let go, took a step back and a deep breath. "Okay. That was unnecessarily violent of me, and I apologize."

"That's all right," he croaked.

"And I'm sure that you're about to apologize for the implication that spending time with the people in this era who care about you a great deal is a horrific idea which inspires such unnecessary violence," Satomi said just a little frostily.

Palm of her hand resting firmly on one tattooed cheek, Chao let out a long sigh. "I apologize for the aforementioned implication," she added wearily. "Let's hear your plan," she added.

By this point, Negi grown accustomed to receiving both reactions of extravagant shock and utter stoicism in response to the description of his plan. Even getting both responses at once wasn't that unfamiliar, thanks to Sakurako and Fate. So watching Hakase, who normally only became as agitated as she presently was while enthusing about Chachamaru's developments, and Chao, who had become as quiet and unreadable as she'd ever been, was nothing novel.

At last, he concluded his presentation, and fell silent to let his audience react.

"... it's workable," Chao said.

"It is?" Satomi asked, eyes reduced to tiny black dots.

"It's no harder than what we planned, back then," the time traveler said casually.

"I beg to differ!"

"I think it's sad that you don't have as much confidence in your abilities as I do," Chao said with a sad little shrug.

"Oh, you don't get to play the emotional blackmail card on me after I just got finished playing it on you!" Satomi yelled.

Negi, who had interesting memories of having worked his ass off to overcome these two young ladies a few months earlier, was somewhat enthralled by the sight of them squabbling like, well, Asuna and Ayaka. He coughed delicately to remind them that he was present.

"What?" they chorused, irritably.

"Ahem. That was my plan, but since Chao-san is here, things can go a little differently. With your help, I'm sure that -"

"Hold it," Chao said, raising a hand and waving it firmly. "I said that I thought your plan was workable, Negi-kun. I never said anything about helping you. And even if I did want to help you, I don't think I can provide the assistance you're imagining. Certainly not in the time frame that you require."

Negi blinked. "But ... but you understand the technologies already, and -"

"It doesn't matter, Negi-kun!" she insisted. "Like I told you, I don't have the means to build the device with me. The tools that I need won't be invented for nearly forty years. Even if I wanted to build the tools to build the tools - actually, you'd probably need to fit another level of building the tools in there - it would take almost the same amount of time for me as it will for Hakase."

"Speaking of whom, let's get back to the whole issue of you trying to shove this off onto me," Satomi interrupted. "I don't think I can -"

"And I'm telling you that it's completely feasible for you," Chao retorted.

"And I'm saying that I appreciate the vote of confidence, but it's not! I don't have any false humility, Chao! But just like I haven't replicated the breakthroughs that gave us Chachamaru without your assistance, I doubt that I'll be able to -"

"Yes, you can," Chao said firmly. "You managed it without me in the original version of history, the one where I never traveled back in time. It took longer, but you built Chachamaru and got her running with Evangeline's help around the time 3-A was supposed to graduate. So you see? I have every reason to be that confident in you."

Satomi still looked dubious. Negi, on the other hand, looked concerned. "Wait," he said. "How many students were in that version of the class?"

"Thirty, of course," said Chao. "Subtract me, and -"

"Yes, but -" He broke off, as it occurred to him that he should perhaps not reveal to Chao what the Headmaster had told him. But the paradoxes of this discussion were confusing him terribly.

Chao pressed on. "- then add great-grandmother, whom I was expecting to join the class after you got back from summer vacation. Did that not happen?"

"But then -" Negi said, now very confused. Subtract her, subtract Chachamaru, subtract Sayo ... but somehow it still added up to thirty students?

"No, we didn't get any new transfer students in our class," Satomi said, eyebrows raised. "A substitute teacher, yes, but no new students."

Chao looked genuinely surprised. "Substitute teacher? Good grief, Anya really is an overachiever on this timeline."

A long moment of silence ensued.

"Anya?" Negi and Satomi chorused.

"Oops."

"Wait ... no, no, wait ..." Negi said, waving a hand at Chao. "That, no, I'm sorry, Chao-san, but what you're saying makes no sense whatsoever, there's no way that it could be, I mean, Anya thinks I'm annoying, she doesn't like me at all, and and and and and -" He began repeating as images played across the movie screen of his mind.

_"It's not like I like you or anything like that!" Chisame declared._

_"It's not like I like you or anything," Evangeline sniffed, looking away._

_"I hate brats like you!" Asuna shouted, blushing brightly._

_"I do not like you!" Anya shouted at him._

"Doyyyyy," said Negi, abruptly gone cross-eyed.

"I think you may have broken him, Chao," Satomi declared a bit nervously.

"Oh, he'll be fine," Chao said dismissively. "Okay, so it's not her. So who is this new substitute -"

"Fate-san."

"... Fate Averruncus? Tertium?" asked Chao, looking just a bit aghast. "He's still alive? I was sure that once Negi-kun defeated the Lifemaker, he'd dissolve into nothingness!"

"I, I technically haven't actually defeated him yet," Negi stammered, only partially recovered from the dramatic shock he'd just received.

"Hmmm," Chao said, frowning deeply. "Well, I would ordinarily suggest that you should be focusing on that problem instead of all this other stuff, but ... well, I suppose that it is a bit much to expect from you before you turn fifteen. For real, I mean."

"Good to know," Negi said faintly. He shook his head. "Um. All right. So, then, Satomi-san, are you willing to undertake the tasks that I've described for you?"

Hakase glanced one more time at Chao. "Well, since it's apparently within my powers, I'm willing to do it. So yes. I'll do what needs doing." A momentary pause. "And thank you for trusting me, Negi-sensei."

He smiled at her. "You're welcome. All right then. Um. I think I'm going to go off, maybe spend some time staring in bewilderment at the passing river as I try to adjust to some of the ideas I've just had revealed to me, and then, of course, I'll certainly try to help you, Chao-san, with your problem, and -"

"Wait a minute," said Satomi. "What about the sex?"

"In retrospect, my mistake was not saying all that while walking briskly towards the door," Negi mused out loud as he watched  _Chao's_  eyes turn into little black dots. "I could probably have made my escape if I'd done that."

"Sex?" Chao repeated.

"Yes, sex. Sexual intercourse," Satomi elaborated. "Everyone else who has been helping him out has had the opportunity, and I can't see why I should be excluded."

The time traveler stared at her colleague, agape, and then slowly turned to gaze at Negi. "What have you  _done_?" she asked again, sounding no less horrified than she had earlier.

"Well, did I mention the part where I was aged up for an extended duration in my summary of recent events?" Negi asked, rubbing his forehead. "I think I did, but for some reason, possibly the stress headache that keeps bothering me, I find it hard to remember certain details."

"Yes, you did -" Chao started to retort.

"Oh, good."

"- but that's not an explanation for why you've - with how many girls?" she asked, breaking off in the middle of one excited declaration to move on to another.

"I believe that the two of us, and possibly Yotsuba-san, are the only ones from our class remaining to enjoy such pleasures. Except of course that you don't qualify as a member of the class anymore, and so -" Satomi started to explain, holding up a hand to perhaps make a 'shoo, shoo' gesture.

"That's not accurate," Negi said faintly, still holding his head. "Satsuki has ... um, well, but on the other hand, Misora-san and Akira-san are both, also, not involved ... with me, at least. Misora-san has done it with a few of the other girls, but she didn't want to do it with me and it was so nice to hear that from someone!" he added, hands falling from his head and an incredibly cheerful smile blooming on his face.

"Oh, that's interesting," said Satomi, sounding utterly disinterested. "In any event, Chao, since you're not a member of the class, and apparently don't want to do this sort of thing, I certainly wouldn't want to offend your rather puritanical Martian ethics by making you watch. So ... bye!" This time, she succeeded in making the 'shoo' gesture.

"Are you serious?" Chao asked, gaping at her. "I thought you were - well -"

"What?" asked Satomi, frowning. "Content to wait for you to start expressing some sort of affection to me? Willing to go on believing that you'd one day come back and embrace me as a lover?  _Not_  annoyed by your occasional attempts to manipulate me through the implication that I was an ancestor of yours as well, a pose more or less discredited by my discovery that your vaunted Chao family tree was a blank book and now completely undone by recent revelations?"

"I was going for lesbian, but all that is also -"

"Chao, I'm going to have sex with Negi-sensei, now, so please leave if you don't intend to participate," Satomi said firmly.

"I suppose that's for the best, since it would be wrong to do that sort of thing with a blood relative," Negi agreed. "Which doesn't stop Yuna or Fuuka and Fumika, admittedly," he added in yet another fit of honesty.

"And since your flirtation with Negi-sensei earlier was just another mind game -" Satomi began.

"All right, already!" said Chao as she reached up to start taking off her armor.

* * *

As she often did, regardless of whether she was deliberately using another person's persona or not, she found herself wondering who she was when she woke up. Was she Luna, traumatized sister hiding herself in the shadows of an organization trying to destroy the world in order to save it? Was she Shiori, the cool professional whose life was totally devoted to that organization and had no memories of a life before it? Was she the new, third person, somehow both Luna and Shiori, who'd been born in the moment she realized that there was a life outside of Cosmo Entelekhia?

She made her choice, and let her eyes slide open.

As she watched Fate lying on his back, stark naked, while an equally naked Sakurako straddled his hips and rocked back and forth atop him, she decided that her choice had clearly been misinformed, since she was obviously having a  _very_  strange dream, and so closed her eyes to await her actual awakening. Unfortunately, the noises that the two of them were making, particularly as their respective climaxes drew closer and closer, soon had her realizing that this wasn't the sort of dream from which one could awaken. She kept her eyes closed, though, even after Sakurako's sharp cry announced her fulfillment, and a soft grunt from Fate announced his release.

Then she felt a soft body half-falling against her own. "I know you're awake," Sakurako cooed into her ear.

 _Ah well,_  she thought, then opened her eyes to see Sakurako grinning at her. "So that wasn't a dream, then," she said.

"Noope," Sakurako agreed. "Did you really think it was?"

"My memories are sometimes a bit untrustworthy," she admitted. It was a simpler explanation than the truth. But some of the truth crept into her next statements nonetheless. "And I have had dreams about this sort of thing."

"You mean, dreams about you -" Here Sakurako broke off and pointed in the general direction of Fate, who was lying with his eyes closed beside her. "- and the other Fatettes?"

"I'm still not used to that name," she sighed.

"Well, what do you call yourselves?"

"... generally, we call ourselves by our names. We didn't have a, a group name, as such."

Sakurako hummed. "I think that's really sad. You should have one. Maybe you could call yourselves the Fate-gumi."

"... except that none of us are Japanese, Sakurako-san."

"Um, you've had my fingers up you. I think you can dispense with the 'san'."

"Ehm. Anyway, yes, sometimes with the other girls, sometimes ..." Here she trailed off, looking very embarrassed.

Sakurako blinked, and then a grin slowly spread across her face. "Ohhhh," she said. "You, and -" A point in Fate's direction. "- and -" Now a point in another direction, implicitly that of a certain teacher.

She nodded silently.

Sakurako turned, glanced at Fate, then returned to Shiori, leaned forward to her ear, and began to whisper.

* * *

Negi cocked his head. "Did either of you just hear someone shouting 'What?' in a very high-pitched voice?"

"I hear nothing save the pounding of my own heart in response to my arousal and excitement," Satomi responded as she pulled off her lab coat.

"Geh," said Chao with a visible flinch as she stripped off her powersuit's 'cuirass', to use a somewhat inappropriate and anachronistic term for its chest and back. "Overwrought  _and_  factually incorrect. And yet she wonders why I never encouraged her romantic tendencies."

Negi also flinched as he got a good long look at the scarring and tattooing on Chao's naked form, normally covered up by masking spells but in full view now, along with the still forming bruises from the aforementioned fight. "Um, Chao-san, you know, we don't have to do anything if you don't -"

"Oh, no, she is  _not_  getting out of this now," Satomi interrupted, frowning grimly as she adjusted the glasses that were the only thing that she was wearing. "I don't wonder why you never encouraged my romantic tendencies, I understand that completely! You can't handle honest emotion about anything other than your obsession, can you?"

Chao flinched again as the leggings of her armor rolled down without her even laying a finger on them. "That's not -"

"Yes it is!" Satomi declaimed, pointing a non-swirly tipped finger at her. "Unlike you, I've had a few months to think about this, and I've come to a few conclusions that I'm more than ready to air!"

The time traveler glanced at Negi - who had paused while taking off his trousers and watching all this - and then considered both Satomi's naked form and her own as well. "Have you perhaps examined the notion that this isn't the time or place to air those conclusions?" she asked mildly.

"No, and I choose to leave that notion unexamined!" Satomi almost snarled. She stopped pointing and waved her hands in the air. "You tried to manipulate me into acting like someone who's sold their soul to science - 'sold their soul', an absurdity since the soul does not exist and thus has no commercial value, and 'to science', an even bigger absurdity since there is no anthropomorphic personification of science who would buy it! All this, because you didn't want to confront the possibility that your pawns might have more complicated feelings than you're capable of having!"

Now Chao was starting to get a bit angry. "I never viewed you as a pawn!"

"'All that seems like a dream!'" Satomi quoted. "Your exact words! We were all just characters in a story you were telling, all just people long dead that you don't have to care about or even really respect and how am I supposed to take your reassurances about my abilities seriously nughhh?"

As has often been observed, it is somewhat difficult to express oneself verbally when one is being kissed.

"Well," said Negi, observing. "She really is clearly related to me, I guess."

Chao responded to that remark with a raised middle finger as she frantically snogged Hakase.

"Also definitely related to Anya," Negi mused aloud as he resumed removing his pants.

That one she ignored. "Yes, I said that it was all like a dream," she softly told to Satomi as she pulled back from the kiss. "But even if I haven't had months to think about it, maybe only an hour, that was long enough that I've realized that it was the sort of dream you never really want to wake up from. And you, and Ku, and Chachamaru ... of all of you, you were the best part of it. No, you were not just pawns. I love you."

"... dit yu shay shum'in?" a goggle-eyed Hakase asked blearily.

Chao let out an exasperated sigh. "Social dominance pheromones are more trouble than they're worth," she muttered in Mandarin, then turned to look back at Negi. "Get over here, will you?"

Obedient as always, Negi headed over in nothing but his boxers, which came off as soon as he was within arm's reach of Chao.

"Ghlghlghl," Hakase said, glasses fogging over, as she got a good long look at what was covered up by said boxers.

"Should I take it that that reaction has become depressingly common?" Chao asked her abruptly weary looking ancestor.

"I'm afraid so," Negi admitted.

"Well, if it helps, you're undersized for  _my_  era," she told him.

"... why would that help?" Negi asked, mildly appalled. "And how -"

"Enhancements are wonderful things," she explained, then pulled Hakase down to her knees beside her, and started demonstrating to her how the procedure was supposed to go. Fortunately, Satomi was a fast learner.

So, soon enough Chao was sitting back and watching Satomi's head bob back and forth on Negi's unit with a curious, vague mixture of pride and awkward melancholy. Negi would have certainly realized how telling it was, to see that plainly visible on her expression, since normally she would mask her true feelings under several layers of courageous smiles. (This marked another parallel between both of them, although this bit might have escaped Negi's reasoning even now).

Alas, at the moment Negi, who was only a man or boy-turned-man after all, was too absorbed into Satomi's attentions to truly notice all of that. Satomi's tongue worked diligently on his member and ballsack, and her hands gripped tightly on his buttocks, so, although she was far from being as skilled as Kaede or Asuna, she more than made up for it with drive and enthusiasm. Before too long, he was sighing and giving short, gasping warnings that Satomi really did not get, but that Chao was kind enough as to heed, so she could gently pull Satomi back before Negi ejaculated, spraying white all over their faces.

Satomi coughed frantically a few times while Chao, with far more aplomb, delicately licked the sperm off her lips, then kissed Satomi's mouth a few times to collect the semen spread all across it. Negi, breathing heavily due mostly to emotional reasons, watched her as she made sure to swallow as much of his seed as she could, and then asked her, "Doesn't it make you feel bad at all?"

"Does anything ever make you feel good at all?" Chao asked back. "Be careful, because someone who loses their capacity to enjoy life also loses the capacity to hope."

"I'm not helped by people constantly turning my words against me like that," Negi admitted.

Chao rose back to her feet and kissed him. He flinched slightly, but didn't resist. She held his cheeks in her hands and said, "Lessons stop as soon as they are learned. All of them still have a lot to learn, but so do you, and it seems you still refuse to learn the more important lesson. Finding the balance between what makes you happy and what makes others happy. What makes you happy, Negi? Be honest."

"Other people's happiness," he quickly answered.

"Ah," she meowed, kissing his chin and giggling at his newest flinch. "That's admirable, but keep in mind, nothing that one does will ever make everyone happy at once."

Satomi nodded. "Now that's an empirical fact. For instance, I'm sure this display is making Chao highly contented, and yet I can't help feeling slightly dissatisfied after fulfilling my purpose for this stage of our sexual act."

Chao gave her a dirty look, pulling her towards them. "Oh, for someone so proud of being guided by pure intellect, you can be so much of an emotional drama queen!" She kissed her again. "You know, I never implied directly you were MY ancestor, despite what you might have thought."

Satomi actually pouted, as she felt one of Negi's hands coming to rest on her left buttock, and Chao's on her right one. "That's easy to say when one hides behind skilled words of misdirection that can be taken one way or another, especially by someone with limited social expertise and -"

Chao gave her another kiss. "Oh, be quiet. Of course, the fact I never did imply that doesn't mean I never implied you might have originated another bloodline with Negi."

Negi tensed up, his eyes growing wider, and so did Hakase's.

"Of course," Chao purred, moving aside while bringing Negi and Satomi's bodies tightly together, "that was in another timeline, with several diverging factors. Still, scientific experimentation all but demands that we see if at least some factors from that timeline still hold true under the present circumstances...  _ne?_ " she playfully added.

Satomi and Negi were looking into each other's eyes deeply now. She nodded firmly. "For science," she declared, wrapping an arm around his scarred body.

He nodded back, gently bringing her down as he placed herself on top of her. He soothed her tremors with soft cooing sounds, and slowly held her legs apart as he entered her, bit by bit, first the tip, and then, once it was settled tightly against her entrance, he-

"Too slow!" Chao said, slapping his ass so hard he all but shoved himself within the hissing Satomi in a single go.

After several gagging and sputtering sounds, Satomi turned her tear stricken eyes to Chao and promised, "I'll get you for this!"

"Think of it as an incentive for you to miss me less after I'm gone again," Chao shrugged. "Is it working?"

Satomi groaned, tightening her legs and arms around the young man. "I'll ... I'll wait for the experiment's conclusion before being able to answer properly."

"I imagined you wouldn't want to suspend the experiment, huh," Negi sighed before starting to move back and forth as smooth and kindly as he could.

Even now, it troubled him (more than usual) to learn that he had just deflowered a virgin, which obviously was the case here and now. He had heard Satomi's faint sobs as blood slowly trickled out of her, and he could do nothing now but kiss her face and whisper words of comfort to her. That she was a virgin had not surprised him, and she was no sports aficionado, so hoping for an otherwise broken hymen would have been too much. Even so, thinking of how she had just granted him her virginity with no evident second thoughts concerned him, in that it showed she either cared nothing about that sort of important event or, despite her apparent lack of interest in him, she actually felt deeply for him - much like Nodoka, or Ku Fei.

 _It is unfair,_  he thought as he rammed into her and vaguely paid attention to her growing cries of pleasure,  _that I should have that strange gift to attract so many people I can't possibly love back as much as they deserve._  Maybe there was some merit to those suggestion of creating copies of himself to-

No. That way madness lied.

"I'm coming," he rasped when he finally felt his climax approaching. "Are you still sure you want it?"

"OH YES YES YES YES YES!" Satomi clawed at his back, and Chao shifted closer to apply two fingers in her colleague's clitoris, applying enough efficiently calculated pressure as to bring her to orgasm at the same time Negi grunted and shot into her. "Aaaahhhhh," Satomi exhaled, pink tongue lolling out.

Chao pulled his fingers back at the same time Negi pulled out with a sighed. She blew on her fingers as if blowing on a smoking gun and winked an eye at her lovers. "Count yourselves lucky you've got a partner that knows all the tricks of the trade!"

"... you do?" Satomi weakly asked her.

"Is that disappointment in your voice?" Chao asked back. "What, did you truly think I'd have become a worldly genius able to master magic and science to incredible levels, plus acquiring great business skills and unmatched martial arts prowesses, without ever dabbling in something as mundane as sex? Something any shmuck walking past you in the street has experienced before being of age to drink?"

"I have to admit I had a more idealized view of you in that regard," Satomi muttered.

"I'm sorry to have failed your expectations," Chao honestly said.

"And your martial arts aren't unmatched, by your own admission Ku Fei is your superior," Satomi reminded her.

"That was a figure of speech!" Chao protested, then faced Negi again, hands on her hips. "Since it's clear Satomi-chan will need a rest right now, but your virility isn't taking it, I think you know what comes next, right?"

"... but you're my descendant," Negi blandly said.

Chao rolled her eyes. "I seem to remember I am, yes. Just like I was when I first told you about it!" She then took a hold of his member and stroke it, not bothering to be gentle. "Anyway, this isn't getting any softer from looking at my nudity, so you shouldn't bother with pretenses of disgust!"

"The flesh and the reason have their own desires," Negi said. "And I think I'd like to keep at least a few taboos untouched."

"Have you had intimacy with animals?" Satomi asked, resting on a side.

"What? NO!" Negi shouted.

"Has any of your sexual activity involved the use of urine or fecal matter?" Chao asked.

"Wha- No, that's disgusting! Why are you even asking-"

"Sexual intercourse with children, as in actual children, Evangeline-san not counting?" Satomi added.

"What kind of sick person would even, um, sorry, don't mind me!" Negi gulped at the mild glares Chao and Satomi were leveling at him now.

"Sex with other males?" Chao asked now.

"Hey, now, homosexuality is not a deviancy, as you should be well aware after what you've just done to me," Satomi argued.

"I know, but try arguing that with someone raised in a small conservative Welsh town, will you?" Chao said, looking at her but rapping her knuckles on Negi's forehead.

"There's nothing wrong with that, but even so, it's still not something I'm interested in," Negi said evenly.

"Oh, poor Fate-sensei," Satomi said in a tone that was mildly mocking. Before Negi could ask what Fate had to do with any of this, Satomi asked, "Diaper fetish? Bondage? Erotic suffocation? Rape-themed play pretend? 'Furry' costume play? Sex in exchange for money? Sex with senior citizens who actually look like senior citizens? Cheating on a married couple?"

"For a virgin, you sure are well informed," Chao arched an eyebrow as she made Negi rest on his back and straddled his hips.

Satomi blushed and pushed her glasses up. "W-Well, it got lonely when a certain someone was not picking up the obvious clues a socially awkward person would leave!"

"I ended up making up for it, didn't I?" Chao asked, guiding Negi's dick towards her own cunt. "Anyway, as you can see, Negi-bouzu, you still have a lot of taboos left to break. And you still have a lot of ground to cover before reaching my level."

"That's a relief of sorts, actually, but -" Negi blinked. "Wait, are you telling me you've dabbled in inceeeeeeehhhh..." he trailed off as he felt himself enter Chao.

She chuckled, her hands on his chest, her feet acting as leverage for her paused descents and ascensions. "I don't 'dabble' into things. Every single thing I have ever done, I've mastered it."

Negi boggled for a moment before asking, "This isn't one of those strange sci-fi scenarios where you are your own descendant, right? Are you sure it's Anya-"

"It's Anya, but everyone has a lot more than a single ancestor," Chao puffed as she bounced steadily on his cock. "I'm not sure, but there are accounts of one of my grandparents claiming to be a time traveling child of mine who impregnated your granddaughter. I think he was full of it, though," she panted, as they quickened their shared pace.

"But, you said Martians don't tell lies -"

"Which proves he wasn't a Martian, which makes the whole thing fall apart, honestly, Negi, try to keep up!"

Satomi sat back to watch with rapt fascination and scarlet cheeks as she touched herself. It was simply majestic, like two demigods (not that Satomi would have used that specific silly comparison herself) making love, over several long, long moments that seemed to span an eternity, until they shared cries of release, and their backs arched in unison, marking the flow of his seed into Chao's body.

Satomi almost felt like weeping, for some reason.

* * *

"I don't believe it," Shiori said for maybe the twentieth time as she walked briskly down the streets of Mahora, with Sakurako following closely on her heels. The 'twentieth time' business was, of course, Sakurako's somewhat skewed perception of matters. It had actually only been five times or so.

"I don't believe it," Shiori said, making it six or so and possibly informing you as to why Sakurako's skewed perception was not all that skewed.

"I don't believe a lot of things myself," Sakurako told her in an attempt to be helpful. Though it was a factual statement, as well. For example, she couldn't believe that, after Shiori's hysterical outburst, Fate hadn't even bothered to ask what had provoked it, instead waking up just long enough to inform them that disturbing his dormancy cycle was profoundly inadvisable, and if they were going to be making such sounds, they should probably make them elsewhere. She also couldn't believe that Fate had managed to remain dormant even as the two of them got dressed, while Shiori had been somewhat more quietly quizzing her about what she'd just been told. 'Somewhat more quietly' had often risen  _almost_  to the point of the shout that had awakened Fate, so it was really surprising that he hadn't roused again to perhaps, physically throw them out of his room.

"How could this have happened?" Shiori asked rhetorically, without even glancing in the direction of the person whom she was notionally addressing.

"Well, you see, when a boy and a girl like each other,  _very much_  -" Sakurako started to helpfully explain.

Shiori whirled on her, looking outraged, and for a moment Sakurako was genuinely concerned that the girl was about to hurt herself. (Sakurako played lacrosse, Shiori was just a highly trained secret agent. No contest there.) Instead, Shiori froze in one place, put her hands down. Brought them up to her chest, knuckles pressed against each other and fingers entwined. Lowered them again, sweeping to the sides as she let out a great exhalation.

"Wow," said Sakurako, amazed. "I do the same thing sometimes!"

"Yay you," Shiori said, sounding slightly more calm but no more happy. "That's not what I meant."

"Guessed that."

Ignoring her, Shiori continued with difficulty. "I thought that I had made a connection with those of your classmates who spent time with me," she said. "I thought that they would respect my feelings for Negi-san, and wait until they could fairly compete with me for his feelings. I thought -"

"You really thought that?" Sakurako interrupted. "Okay, sweety? That was dumb. Really, really, seriously dumb. There's an old saying from my hometown that goes, 'All is fair in love and war'. And even if they had respected it, that still left me and all the other girls who didn't spend time with you. So, really, you should be happy that you're going to get this chance to -"

"I don't believe it," Shiori said again.

"Oh, come on, we've been over this al-"

"No, this time, I don't believe that we're discussing this in public, on a street filled with people going to and from their evening's entertainments, and not attracting any interest!" Shiori looked about at the aforementioned people. "I worked and worked to overcome my prejudice against the civilians of this world, after I came to know some of them and realized that they were not  _all_  silly girls with no understanding of the harsh realities of life, but now that I'm actually here -" She broke off, grabbed a fellow in a rumpled suit and tie, and started shouting. "If I did magic in front of you, would you dismiss it as CGI?"

"Eruuhh?" he asked.

"Sorry, we're a theatre group," Sakurako hurriedly told him as she freed him from Shiori's grip. "She's really getting into her performance, isn't she?"

"Yeahh, great, good job, kids," he said blearily as he walked away.

"He found that plausible!" Shiori cried out, almost on the verge of tears. "Your civilization is sick!"

"Well, he was drunk, too, so -"

"Nyargh!" Shiori gasped as she crumpled down to the sidewalk.

"Things aren't so bad," Sakurako said, comfortingly. When, after a moment, Shiori hadn't gotten up, Sakurako started to get nervous. "Hey, Shiori? Are you okay?"

Shiori lifted her head, looked dizzily towards Sakurako. "No," she said weakly. Slowly, she turned to look in the direction of the World Tree, distantly visible despite the evening haze. "It's happening," she said. "Sooner than any of us thought. It's happening, now. We're out of time."

* * *

"Ahhhhh," Chao sighed once her rather extravagant orgasm had run its course. "That was sooo good, Daddy."

"You're, you are amaaaaawwwwait, Daddy?" Negi asked.

"That's the other rumor about that one grandfather," she explained patiently. "When you have a legendary ancestor, reputed to be immortal, the notion of him showing up in disguise to breed with his descendants is something that gets talked up a lot."

"Oh," Negi said, once more appalled. "But, but you don't actually think that, that I'm -"

"Nope," she assured him, kissing his cheek. "You don't look a thing like my father. And you're a much nicer person than he was."

"Oh, good."

"Also better at sex."

"... and we're back to the position we were in before I said 'good'," Negi said faintly, eyes firmly closed. As his hands were cradling Chao's shapely buttocks, he found it temporarily impossible to bring them up to rub his forehead - not that doing so ever did anything to help his headaches - but he really wanted to do so all the same.

"Well, sorry, but my father was kind of an asshole," she told him. "But since a certain sneaky person might just possibly have manipulated history to ensure he'll never be born -"

"Please, just stop," he said. "You're giving Satomi a very strange idea of what pillow talk is like."

She craned her neck to look at the tearful girl who was staring at them, fingers working between her legs as she crouched nearby. "This isn't what pillow talk is like," Chao said a bit blandly.

"Mm-hm, mm-hm, I get that," Satomi said, nodding rapidly. And sniffled.

"Oh, Mozi," Chao said. "Get over here, dummy, you shouldn't feel the need to wait for an invituhh." It was now Chao's turn to learn how difficult it was to talk under certain conditions. Then, of course, Satomi kissed Negi, and Negi kissed her, and they were doing a fairly good job of trying to kiss each other all at the same time when the door to the lab was flung open.

"Negi!" shouted Sakurako as she ran in. "We've got - oh wow."

"Should I come in there?" Shiori's voice asked from the hallway, sounding tired and sick.

"No, I really don't think you should," Sakurako replied as the tiny black dots that were her eyes took in the sight before her.

"'kay," Shiori said weakly.

"Um, hey Chao-san, I'd say that I'm glad to see you except that I think you've probably made a really really  _really_  complicated situation even  _more_  complicated by showing up now but on the other hand I actually am glad you came back from wherever it was that you went even though we were never all that close and I'm actually a little worried that you'll take a terrible and lingering vengeance on me for that whole tickle you until you cry thing where you said that you were violated but I did sort of think it was funny and you clearly don't have problems with the whole sex thing and ummm I think I may have actually lost the thread of this conversation and oh wow that has never happened to me before and this is a really bad development and ah that reminds me -"

"Sakurako," interjected Negi, helpfully. "Is something the matter?"

"I was getting to it," she assured him. "Um, the World Tree is dying. Like, now."

"Well ... shit," said Chao, quoting one of the Magical World's best-known authors.

"Quite," Negi squeaked as he dressed frantically. "I thought I'd have at least one more day to - no, never mind that now, I have the whole thing almost ready, but the two of you are going to have to come with me."

Satomi, who was an even snappier dresser, nodded briskly. Chao, on the other hand, gave him a perplexed glance. "I can see why you'd want Hakase there," she said. "But why me?"

Negi sighed.

"And don't act like the greatly put-upon, it's a reasonable question."

"Which I was going to an- ahem, I need you there to confirm to Asuna that you think this is a viable plan. She'll believe you, where she might not immediately believe me." A half-smile quirked on his face. "After all, Martians don't tell lies."

Chao coughed as she started to roll on her armor. "You're getting sneaky, Negi-kun," she told him in an uncomplimentary tone.

"That's just what I told him," Sakurako told her.

"Stands to reason," Chao said softly.

Sakurako wasn't really listening, which made her next words terribly ironic. "But did he listen? Nooooo. Okay, what about me and -" She gestured, vaguely, in the direction of the open door to the lab.

"I need you to -" Negi broke off, and hesitantly, walked to the door and peered past the threshold to see Shiori sitting in the hallway - more crumpled up there, to be honest - and breathing heavily. "Um, Shiori-san? Are you okay?"

"Well," she answered, after giving the question a great deal of thought, "I feel like I am dying and my heart is broken. Other than that, things are just great."

"I don't know what to say," he admitted, stepping the rest of the way out into the corridor, so that she could see him, unbuttoned shirt and all.

"That's good, because I actually don't want to talk to you, right now. I don't get a lot of chances to be mad at people, so I'm sort of enjoying this - except that I'm not, really. The contradiction is confusing."

"Yes, I understand that," he agreed. "All that I can say is that I'm sorry, and -"

"Okay, I forgive you," she interrupted.

"Really?" he asked, blinking.

"It's disgusting how you're surprised at how easily the people who love you forgive you," she told him. "Really, if I had the capacity for anger at you right now, that would ... never mind. Are you going to save the world?"

"I'm going to try," he told her. This time, he fought the impulse towards total honesty ... and was dismayed when he lost. "But there's a chance that I'm going to end up destroying it."

"Uh-huh," Shiori said, as one unsurprised might speak. She shook her head. "I really did fall in love with the same guy, twice."

"Sorry?"

"Go, do what you do," she told him.

With another deep breath, he turned to look at Sakurako, who'd been watching this conversation in silence. "Sakurako, I need you watch over her, but if you could also call Zazie and ask her, if she isn't already heading for the gate, to start that way. I'm going to need her for this, too."

"Got it," she said. "What about -"

"No, Mana won't be needed for this part."

"That's not what I was going to say," Sakurako told him with grave dignity.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," he said, embarrassed.

She looked at him. "It really is disgusting," she said. "Anyway, after I got finished asking about Mana, I was going to ask about Asuna -"

"She'll already be heading there," Negi told her, suppressing a faint smile at her admission. "She knows her duty. Our task is to convince her that she can get out of it."

* * *

"I was right," Negi announced to Chao as the pair of them dashed down the streets, Satomi riding on her scooter just a bit behind the two of them. "Ayaka just sent me a telepathic squirt, saying that she's escorted Asuna, Konoka and Setsuna to the gateway terminus. The Headmaster and Kurt-san are already there."

"Pretty much the whole cast, then," Chao mused out loud. "It's going to be odd, with Sanjou Kozue  _not_  there."

"Excuse me?" said Negi, doubling the phrase as a polite apology to the lady walking her dogs that he'd just ripped past. "Who is Sanjou Kozue?"

"Asuna's roommate and best friend in the original timeline," she explained. "Wrote the biographies of you and pretty much every one else in the class that I read growing up."

Negi nearly stumbled. "Well, what happened to her?"

"I don't know!" Chao admitted. "I think my early experiments with time displacement, where I sent inanimate objects back to various points in the timeline before I jumped back myself, may have caused divergences from the history I learned, like a butterfly flapping its wings to make a hurricane. At the very least, I've never found any record of her attending any of Mahora's schools."

"Hrmm," he grumbled, as Sakurako was proven right yet again. Chao  _was_  complicating an already complicated situation, and the worst part was that he suspected that  _this_  time, she was doing it partly unwittingly - as he knew, or thought he knew, that she was unaware that her direct meddling with the timeline wasn't over yet. His headache was back, at full force, and getting worse every moment. But there was no time for that now.

They rounded the corner and began their final approach to the gateway, where four girls, an elderly gentleman, a younger adult male, and a young boy were waiting. Negi blinked in surprise that Fate was there, but he supposed that this definitely concerned him.

"Ah, Negi-kun, I hope that you're oh no no no no," Konoemon said in a hollow tone as he caught sight of who was accompanying him.

"Hello, Headmaster," Chao said cheerfully. "I hope we're not going to do anything crazy like try to arrest me, again, or anything like that, are we?"

"Chao?" Asuna gasped.

"Yo!" she said. "I should say 'no da', but -"

"Negi-kun, please tell me that relying on the assistance of this person isn't your plan," the Headmaster asked, looking sick.

"Oh, no, of course not," Negi assured him. "Not that her assistance wouldn't be very helpful, I'm sure," he said, as Chao started to glare at him. "But that's definitely not my plan," he said, as the Headmaster looked about to keel over. "She's really sort of a, a guarantor, of sorts."

"Guarantor?" Konoka repeated. "Negi, what are you -"

"As soon as Zazie is here -"

"I am here," the demon princess, in her full regalia, declared as she emerged from the shadows.

"- then I can explain everything, at last. You see -"

And that was when the gate opened, blinding everyone present.

"What in the world?" Konoemon cried. "Who would be mad enough to try and travel between the worlds under these -"

"Oooookay!" shouted an enormous voice. "I sure as hell hope my best student has worked out that plan he said he was working out!"

"- oh, I suppose it was a foolish question, wasn't it?" the Headmaster mused quietly.

"Rakan-san!" Negi gasped as the dots faded from his eyes. "Are you -"

For once, the living legend was not smiling broadly as he stood there, in the heavy armor that, of those gathered there, only Fate had ever actually seen him wearing, and breathing heavily. "I'm just frickin' dandy, kid!" he replied. "But we're running out of time, over there, and what comes next is gonna make it even worse!" He gestured back towards the gateway, which appeared to be growing in brightness as he spoke. "So if you've got a plan, now would be the time to put to use!"

"What comes -"

The gate opened again, this time depositing a pair of travelers somewhat more roughly, as though they were tumbling out of it rather than being transferred while standing.

"I can't believe that worked," said a familiar voice.

"You'd better be glad that worked," said a less familiar one. "If we ended up tumbling through space and time for all eternity, I was going to eat you  _raw_."

Again, Negi blinked away the blindness, and gaped. "Chamo-kun?" he cried out.

"Aniki!" the ermine also cried, like one stranded in a desert and perceiving an oasis nearby. He promptly ran over to the magician's leg and began holding it. "I'm sorry, aniki, I'm sorry I left you alone for all these years -"

"It's only been a few weeks," Negi said vaguely.

"- years, years I say, years where you were without the benefit of my guidance and advice and you've probably been -" Chamo paused, took a long whiff, and gazed up at Negi with an expression somewhere between religious adoration and outright horror. "Aniki, what the hell have you been doin' without me?"

"Ah -" Negi stammered, then, desperate for any way to avoid this conversation, looked towards Chamo's traveling companion. And then looked towards Chamo's traveling companion again, because she demanded a second look.

"Hey, there, Negi," said the fifteen-year-old-looking red-haired girl who was, despite everything, clearly Anya. "Everything", in this case, included a sneaky, triumphant smile.

"Anya?" Negi gasped. "My gosh, has it actually been  _years_  on the other side?" he asked Rakan, who looked less than impressed by this digression.

"Nah," the giant said. "She's just usin' age-up pills."

" _Improved_  age distortion pills," Anya declared. "Ones that last for days, not hours, like the ones you use, Negi. I worked really hard to improve them, once I realized that there was no substitute for hard work!"

"Wouldn't actually aging normally be a much better use of hard work?" asked Chao, eyebrow raised.

"Who the hell are you?" Anya growled, glaring at her.

"That's amazing, Anya!" said Negi, desperate to head off that conversation and honestly impressed. "I mean, I've been able to extend an age-up pill for months instead of hours with Erebea, but you've really done a fantastic ... why are you staring at me like that?" he asked.

"Always, always, always, you've got to one-up me, don't you!" Anya shrieked. "Ghah!" She stomped off to go and talk to Asuna.

"Aniki, be nice to her, she's kind of crazy, that one," Chamo told him quietly.

"Runs in the family, I guess," said Negi without a glance at Chao.

"So, 'bout that plan?" Rakan asked impatiently.

"Ah, yes, I do have a plan, and it's ready to go right now! But I need to explain it to Asuna. It's actually pretty simple, and I can summarize it in two words, just like the other one. But I'd really, really appreciate it if, once I do so, nobody repeats those two words in a disbelieving tone, because that's really annoying and ... okay, here it is. My plan is -  _time travel_!"

"Time travel?" repeated Asuna, Konoka, Setsuna, Konoemon, Chamo, Rakan, and Anya, in disbelieving tones.

"... KEEE-RIIIST JAYSUS, WHAT DID I  **JUST**  SAY!" Negi roared.

"Negi, calm down," said Chao, of all people, while nearly everyone else gaped at him in the wake of that outburst.

"Well, seriously, I just - ahhhh," he concluded, slapping his face with his hands. "All right. In brief, since we know that time travel is possible -" Here he gestured towards Chao, who shrugged. "- then it doesn't matter how much time we use, since we can always get it back. So. We will begin a long term project to discover the scientific and magical secrets of time travel -" He gestured towards Satomi, who adjusted her glasses. "- supported by the wealth of corporate sponsors who will benefit from spinoff discoveries -" He gestured towards Ayaka, who gave an uncomfortable half-bow. "- and guided by long-lived managers who will ensure the project keeps its course, rather than becoming distracted by other matters." He concluded with a gesture towards Zazie, who smiled faintly, and then towards Fate ... who did absolutely nothing.

"So, then, I go into suspended animation," Asuna said slowly. "And when I get out, there's a time machine waiting for me to bring me back to ... well, now?"

"Almost," Negi told her, holding up a finger. "That is  _almost_  correct. There will be a time machine waiting for you when you get out of suspended animation - because as soon as the project produces a working model, you will be awakened from suspended animation! If it takes thirty years, forty years - however long it takes - you'll be awakened immediately, as soon as we have a working time machine."

"Negi-kun!" Konoemon exclaimed. "Won't that have a serious impact on the terraforming project?"

"Quite possibly," Negi replied. "But the failure of the terraforming project on one timeline, the one where Asuna wakes up and travels back to the present, won't effect the terraforming project on  _another_ timeline, the one which results from that journey!"

"Wait, then won't I exist in two places at once?" asked Asuna, eyes starting to go a bit spinny.

"You already have existed in two places at once!" Negi reminded her. "During the school festival, remember? There was no difficulty, since your two selves didn't interact in any meaningful way, just like they won't when this happens."

"So ... you're sacrificing the other Asuna?" she asked, very quietly.

" _No,_ " Negi answered, almost before she finished speaking. "I believe in you, Asuna. I believe that you will survive being placed in suspended animation, whether it lasts for twenty years, thirty years, or even a hundred years! Because I believe in  _you_."

Asuna took a deep breath. "Okay. Chao-san, you don't like me, and I don't like you -"

"I like you," Chao interjected, looking surprised.

"Really."

"I think you're a blunt instrument best used by people much smarter than you are, and I find your martyrdom tiresome, but I like you."

"... right," said Asuna, clenching her hands. "Is this workable? Can this ... work out like he's saying that it will? I know you won't lie about it."

Chao glanced at Negi, acknowledging the point. "Yes, Asuna-san, this can work. Admittedly, there will be problems that neither Negi nor I myself have envisioned, but the people that he's recruited to manage the program are very good at dealing with such things. It comes down to whether you are willing to believe in the boy who has just indicated believes in you ... possibly more than you are willing to believe in yourself."

Asuna was quiet, looking up at the night sky. Her eyes moved, almost unwillingly in the direction of the tiny red dot that was Mars. And she took a long breath. "It's a beautiful world," she said.

Then, "Okay. Let's do it, then."

"Well, all right, then," said Governor Goedel, clapping his hands and coming forward. "I have to say that I've found this entire conversation to be utterly bewildering, Negi-kun, and I look forward to a fuller explanation of what this plan of yours entails at a time when the situation is not quite so dire."

"I'll be happy to give it to you," Negi assured him.

"Good, good," the governor said, then glanced at Satomi. "And you are Hakase Satomi, correct? The designer of the, erm, of Chachamaru Karakuri?"

"I'm her mother, yes," Satomi answered, blinking.

"Fascinating," he murmured. "I may wish to have discussions with you, as well, concerning some work upgrading the technological infrastructure of my nation. Of course, first I must do all that I can to ensure the survival of that nation."

"Naturally. I look forward to those discussions," she told him.

Chao, looking off to one side, was quietly humming a Chinese folk song roughly equivalent to 'x and y, sittin' in a tree."

"Let us depart, then," Kurt said to Jack.

"Well, all right then."

"Little help, please," said Asuna, whom Konoka had just started hugging rather firmly during this discussion.

"Ojousama," Setsuna said, looking no happier than her mistress but as determined as ever to do her duty. "It's time."

"A, don't call me ojousama," Konoka said, tears streaming down her face. "B, I'm sorry, I don't understand any of this business about Negi-kun's plan, any more than the creepy pervert governor."

"... I'm standing right here," Goedel complained to Rakan.

"Yeah, and you're a creepy pervert governor while you're standing there."

Kurt allowed himself an annoyed sigh.

"Konoka," said Asuna as she, with as much gentleness as possible, removed Konoka's arms from around her. "It's gonna be okay. I'm going to do this ... and then, you just watch, I'll be back before you know it."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Really really really?"

"Yes, yes, yes."

"Really really rea-"

"Konoka, we're seriously running out of time, here."

"'kay."

"Don't cry, okay?" Asuna said, holding back her own tears with difficulty, before walking up to Goedel and Rakan. "Let's go," she said.

And they began to rise in the air, moving towards the gateway. Those gathered stood there, watching her pull away with teary eyes. Not until the last moment did she turn to look back at them, smiling bravely. "See you real soon!" she cried.

And then she was gone from sight.

"I know she's gone," Konoka said, very quietly, a moment later. "She's not back before I know it."

"She will be though," Negi assured her. "Any minute now, she'll be blinking back into existence ... probably standing behind us."

They considered this, then looked behind them.

"Well, I mean, obviously, if we're looking behind ourselves, then 'behind us', of course, would actually be in front of us, but it doesn't matter, because it's going to happen any minute now."

They then turned to look in front of them. A few minutes passed.

Konoka began bawling her eyes out.

"Annnnnnyyyy minute nowwwwwww," Negi repeated, starting to look a bit panicked.

**To Be Concluded**


	18. Akira, Huge School-Wide Orgy

The future, Asuna had decided, kind of sucked.

When she had at last awakened from her century-long dream, she had found herself alone, beneath the World Tree. That she was there gave her the comfort of knowing that her sacrifice hadn't been pointless, that she had kept the tree alive in its moment of weakness. But that had been a momentary satisfaction in the face of her bewilderment at how she was alone. Why hadn't Negi, at least, been there to meet her?

From that, she had passed to wonder at the sight of the immense, towering space elevator, leavened with confusion at its presence here in Mahora instead of at the equator, and from there to shock at the realization, courtesy of a news broadcast displayed on a screen on one of the buildings, that she'd slept for thirty years longer than the outside of her expectations. What did that mean? Why had it been so long? Negi had said that they'd wake her as soon as the time machine was ready. Had it taken much longer than he'd anticipated?

Where was Negi? Where was Evangeline? She'd found the ruins of the cottage, but no one had lived there for decades, it seemed. Finally, she'd been driven by panic to do something she almost never did - she researched.

Stepping into something resembling an old phone booth, she'd figured out how to call up the computer system and do a search for the name Negi Springfield. The first thing that had came up was a Wikipedia site on him, which revealed that his whereabouts were unknown. She'd sighed with relief at the fact that he was still alive, but this put her no closer to actually finding him. Discovering a local directory, she'd started looking for the family names of people associated with the academy, like Konoe, or Yukihiro. She'd come up lucky on the latter, and promptly sought out one Yukihiro Koishiro.

The security guard on the professor's residence had been polite but firm. "I'm sorry, but I can't just let anyone in off the street to visit Professor Yukihiro."

"Okay, okay, but ... um ... could you tell him that I need to talk to him about, about Negi Springfield?"

"I'm sorry," the security guard had repeated.

And then, from behind her, Asuna had heard a young girl's voice. "Are you looking for Negi-san?" She'd turned to be amazed at the resemblance between Professor Yukihiro's only granddaughter, Aiko, and the girl she'd known all those years ago. Finally, she'd thought, things were going her way.

And now, here she was, standing before a grave which proclaimed itself the final resting place of Negi Springfield (1993-2065), and all she could think was that the future really sucked. "But ... but the computer," she said. "It told me that he was still alive ..."

"Oh, dear," said the young girl beside her. "I think you must be the last person on Earth to know how easily Wikipedia pages can be edited. Unfortunately, there's a small cabal of people who insist that Negi-san never actually died, and they frequently make edits to his page and those of his best-known associates to support that theory. I suppose matters aren't helped by the existence of multiple physical sites claiming to be his grave, but ... well, it can't be helped."

"So he died?" Asuna said, faintly.

"Yes, I'm afraid so. I don't really know much about him, unfortunately, other than the fact that he was very close to my great-great-great-grandmother ... though she actually outlived him, since she passed away when she was 115, about thirty years ago. According to my grandmother, she lived so long because she hoped to be around when another friend of theirs returned. But those are surely just idle stories," the young girl said with a shrug.

"Uhhhh."

"Well, if you'll excuse me, I really must be on my way -" Aiko started to say.

"W-wait!" Asuna interrupted. "Um, your family's company -"

"Yes?" the girl asked.

"Uh ... did it, did it ever do any sort of ... really unusual, crazy, out there research, a-about - uh ..."

"Oh, are you asking about the time travel project?" Aiko asked. "I get asked about that one a lot, as well. Unfortunately, the answer is always the same - it never produced a working model, and it was finally shut down not long after Negi-san passed away. The expenses were just insupportable."

"No," Asuna whispered, horrified. "What ... what was the point, then? Why did I ... what was the point?" she finally cried out, dropping to her knees and starting to sob.

"Which brings to mind something that my grandmother said to me about one of my other great-great-great grandmothers," Aiko said, as she considered Asuna's sobbing form. "A favorite saying of hers, rather."

"What? What?" Asuna asked, through the tears.

"GOTCHA! Who's the queen of messing with people?" she quoted, pulling a watch out of her overcoat, holding it up so that Asuna could see the resemblance to a Cassiopeia, and smiling broadly.

Asuna stared.

An interval passed.

"Hee hee hee," Aiko giggled, despite her bruises and swollen black eye. "I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't be laughing, but the analgesics my nanomeds are releasing have a slightly euphoric side-effect. And also I find your anger somewhat amusing for some reason. It's very wrong of me. Hee hee hee hee."

"Good for you," Asuna retorted, rubbing her knuckles with one hand while also holding the watch. "Thanks for reminding me why I hate kids!"

"You're welcome. Hee!"

She shook her head in annoyance. "So this works like a Cassiopeia would?"

"Almost," said Aiko, still chuckling a bit. "However, it's pre-set so that it will home in on one particular esoterrestrial discharge."

"... huh?"

"'Magical'." The girl made a gesture which Asuna took for air quotes. "Specifically, the surge of 'magic' that accompanied the Great Renewal, shortly after the turn of the twenty-first century."

Now Asuna nodded in understanding. "When I went into suspended animation and healed the World Tree's illness," she said.

"Actually, no," Aiko replied, shaking her head. "I'm not a historian, but from what my grandmother has told me, your situation didn't actually cause the World Tree to recover. I'm not actually clear what did. Everyone I've asked about it, recently, has just coughed and changed the subject. It's very strange."

"... how old are you?"

"I'm in my eleventh year. Why?"

"Never mind. I kind of have a hunch I know what it's going to be," she said, ruefully. "Okay ... so, I have no idea how I'm going to return this when I'm done with it."

"It's all right," Aiko assured her. "We don't use such things any more. After the breakthough that led to their construction, they were used quite a bit, which led to a great deal of chaos - the fixing of which is part of the reason you slept so long."

"Ah, right. I was wondering. All right. Um ... sorry about losing my temper just now."

"That's all right," the little girl said, smiling in an eerily familiar way.

"Right." Asuna took a deep breath. "Here we go."

And just like that, she was gone.

* * *

_About one hundred and thirty years earlier ..._

... it's closer to one hundred and thirty than it is to one hundred and forty, okay?

Cripes, you're picky.

The sun was starting to clear the eastern horizon.

"Any minute, now," Negi repeated once again. It had started to sound rather hollow quite some time ago. "Quite some time ago", incidentally, was also when Anya, Ayaka and Setsuna, who had both looked extremely broken up themselves, had helped a sobbing Konoka to walk away, without even once giving Negi a glance. It seemed likely that Zazie had also absented herself around the same time, though he had to admit that he hadn't actually noticed her departure.

Chao and Satomi had quietly withdrawn sometime after that, leaving Negi alone on the ground beneath the World Tree's sagging branches with Konoemon and Fate. Neither had said anything. Neither had reacted to Negi's periodic repetitions of his mantra.

Until now, at least. "Um ... Negi-kun, while I'm sure that whatever delay is preventing Asuna-kun's arrival is only a temporary one," Konoemon said patiently, "I should point out that we do still have to work today. While Fate-kun might not require sleep, he will need time to prepare his lessons for the day -"

Fate cleared his throat. "Actually, sir, I was hoping to have a word with you after the success of Negi-kun's plans, but under the circumstances -"

"Any minute now."

"- it would probably be for the best to get it over with," he concluded. "I am offering you my immediate resignation as a teacher at Mahora Academy. I have grotesquely violated the academic code of conduct, and will do you the courtesy of resigning rather than being fired."

"Violated the -" Konoemon started to say, the eyes beneath his bushy brows actually showing.

"I have had sexual relations with one of the students in my care," Fate confessed.

Negi, who showed no outward signs of paying attention to anything other than the World Tree, flinched slightly.

"You ...  _what_?" Konoemon sputtered.

"I have had sexual relations with one of the students in my care," Fate repeated, on the assumption that the old man's hearing was failing him.

Konoemon stared at him, aghast. "Was it ... no, no, it couldn't ... please tell me it wasn't Konoka."

Fate actually blinked. "It was not your granddaughter."

"Good, good ... wait, are you telling me that because I told you to do so or because it's the truth?" the old man demanded.

"The latter," Fate confirmed, unsure how to take the Headmaster's obvious horror at the idea of him as his grandson-in-law. "In the name of protecting the victim, I would prefer not to go into greater detail. Nonetheless, it is clearly impossible for me to continue acting as a member of the faculty at this academy. I suspect you would ordinarily be filing criminal charges, but as I am a legal non-entity, that could be somewhat difficult. Therefore I will depart and continue to support the terraforming project - assuming that it can continue - from another location."

"... I suppose, on the whole, that would probably be for the best," Konoemon said, sounding as tired as someone who'd just spent the whole night standing outdoors should be.

"If you will excuse me, then, I will be seeing to Shiori's welfare," Fate concluded, bowing, and then turned and departed.

"... I honestly wonder which one it was," Konoemon mused out loud. "I'm a bit surprised you haven't reacted to this, Negi-kun."

"Any minute now."

"Or perhaps it's not all that surprising after all. Ah well. I'll leave it in your hands, then," the old man said vaguely, before heading off in the opposite direction from Fate.

"I honestly didn't see that coming," said Chamo, resting on Negi's shoulders, regarding him with quite a bit of concern.

"Any ... min ..." Negi said, his voice failing him at last.

"Aniki?" Chamo asked, as the artificially aged boy began walking unsteadily towards the tree trunk. When he arrived at last, he leaned forward to rest the palms of both of his hands, and the side of his face as well, against its bark.

"Why?" he asked, quietly. "What did I do wrong? I don't understand. Did I just not do it soon enough? I don't understand. What do you want of me? I don't understand.  _Why?_ " he finally howled.

"Negi-kun?" asked a voice from behind him.

With some difficulty, Negi managed to push himself back from the tree, then turned around to see who had addressed him. As he did, he vaguely realized that it was a bit strange that he hadn't recognized the voice immediately. Perhaps the roaring noise in his head was distorting his hearing. After all, there was no way that he wouldn't recognize this girl when she spoke to him.

"Akira-san," he said. Yes, the roaring must be distorting things. His own voice sounded almost unrecognizable for how unsteady it was.

Perhaps it was even distorting his vision, for Akira's usually stoic features looked utterly appalled at the moment. "Are you all right?" she asked.

"No," he admitted. "How are you? I mean, uh, I mean, why are you out and about so early?"

"I was jogging," she said, and indeed he belatedly noticed she was wearing a jogging suit. Yes, the roaring had to be messing with all of his senses. "M-Makie recommended it as a way to clear one's head, and ... Negi-kun, what happened?"

He searched for the right words for a moment. "I blew it," he said at last.

Yes, his senses were definitely distorted. That must be why it took until now to notice the absence of an actual weight on his shoulders. "Akira-san," Chamo was saying from the ground between the two of them. "I think maybe aniki may be having some kind of a breakdown. You might wanna get clear, I think this is gonna be seriously seriously bad on the landscape."

He watched Akira take a deep breath. "Don't be silly, Chamo-kun," she said, as she started to walk towards him. "Negi-kun would never hurt any of us. No, never."

"You didn't see him in the bath with Asakura-neesan, way back when!" Chamo protested. "And he wasn't nearly as over the top then, so, please -"

"What exactly do you mean, 'you blew it'?" Akira asked Negi, calmly meeting his thousand yard stare and firmly ignoring Chamo.

"I didn't save Asuna. I didn't save the World Tree. I didn't save the magical world.  _I haven't saved my father._  I ... F-Fate has shown more integrity in one day than I have in weeks ..." Tears were starting to flow down his cheeks, but he kept talking. "I've debauched the entire class. I've perverted Makie into something ... something I don't even recognize, anymore ... and ... I ... broke ... your ... heart ..."

"...  _the whole class?_ " Chamo nearly shrieked.

Akira's steady pace towards Negi paused, and she took a single step back which - purely by coincidence, surely - resulted in her foot coming down where Chamo was standing.  _Crunch._  Then she started walking towards Negi again.

"All this power," Negi said, gazing at his hands which he'd held up before him and which were faintly crackling with lightning. "All this power, and I can't ... do ... any-"

"Negi-kun," Akira interrupted sharply as she stood in front of him. "Do you know what the heart is?"

The sheer non-sequitur nearly floored him. "Huh?" he asked softly.

"Do you know what the  _heart_  is?" she asked again.

"Ah ... the, the feelings, the affections, I mean -"

"No," she interjected again, her own hands coming up to press against his cheeks. She might have flinched at the heat that was flowing from him, but now was not the time for that. "The heart is a muscle. When you damage a muscle, it scars and gets tougher. And you get stronger. More able to make yourself do what you need to do. When your heart gets broken ... it mends. And you realize what's really important." A deep breath. "Negi-kun. I love you. No matter what happens, what you do, I think that I will always love you. And no matter how much of a failure you think that you are ... you are never going to be a failure in my eyes."

She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his, again feeling the heat and again not flinching.

"I really ought to complain about animal abuse," Chamo brokenly observed as he regained consciousness, gazing at the two forms frantically kissing, caressing and oh my undressing before him. "But I'm just too damn happy right now ..."

Since arriving at Mahora, and especially since he'd found himself aged up, Negi had had the opportunity to learn many new things. Until now, however, he had never fully apprehended how difficult it could be to remove a pair of sweat pants without using one's hands - occupied as they were with the shoulder blades of the young woman whose sweat pants they were. Lifting one's foot to try and pull them down through rubbing at the ankle proved less than efficacious, perhaps because of their respective postures - him resting with his back against the tree, her pressed up against him with one leg lifted so that it might have wrapped around his hip had the tree not been in the way.

If the posture was the problem, however, then it was possible that a change in that posture might be a solution. If so, he was about to learn something even now.

 _Study, study,_  he told himself, then pushed away from the tree, slightly startling Akira - though not enough to prevent her from seizing the opportunity to perform the aforementioned 'wrapping' maneuver - and, with a pair of quick steps, reversed their positioning relative to the tree and pressed  _her_  back against it, kissing her soundly on the mouth as he did so. From the sounds coming out of her throat, she approved. That approval became more verbal as he began kissing down her jawline.

"Negi-kun!" she cried as he descended far enough to kiss her sports bra-covered bosom, and proceeded to tear the fabric clear with his teeth. It would probably have been simpler, he mused as he began to tease and bite at her now-exposed nipple, to use his hands to remove it, but he hadn't thought of it until afterwards. Never before had he so thoroughly given himself to the moment as he was now, not even in battle. All else outside of the moment was a blur.

Once he was done, and Akira's nipples both bathed in his saliva, he kissed down her long, flat stomach, briefly fucking her bellybutton with his tongue to her cries of rapture, before once again solving the problem of removing someone's clothes without the use of his hands through the employment of his teeth. First the pants, sliding them down around her knees, and then the bikini briefs beneath, pulling the strings taut until they snapped. He moved in, to repeat the action with the bellybutton with another, much more sexually relevant orifice.

"NEGI-KUUUUUUN!"

The sight of it snapped Chamo out of his daze. "What ... what am I doing?" he asked, as he watched Negi going down on a girl. "No, this won't do! Not at all! It's wrong on so many levels! I have to do something!"

With a flourish, he produced some magic chalk.

"Never fear, aniki!" he cried out. "Brother Chamo will attend to the critical details!"

Neither of them paid the ermine any attention.

"NYAAAAAACCCCKKK," Akira cried, not referring to the village in New York but rather releasing an unintelligible noise that happened to correspond to said village's name. Her left leg had hooked around Negi's neck, and the constriction of her knee as she shuddered in orgasm might have done a mischief to someone who wasn't practically invulnerable. "So good!" she cried out. "So very good! I ... I ... kiss them, who taught you, so good!"

Under other circumstances, Negi might have made a comment, either about how he had, frequently, or about how Akira was probably going to have the opportunity to do so, as well. But between the roaring in his head, which had only eased slightly once Akira had come into his arms, and the erection that he had exposed by pushing down his own pants, he was a bit too distracted to do so. Instead, as he began kissing his way back up her torso, he steadied himself to say something else, for what felt like the thousandth time.

"We doooooh fuck it," he said instead as he came face to face with her, seeing both the eagerness and the apprehension in her eyes. "Are you ready?" he asked, somewhat breathlessly, as he pressed the tip of his erection against her vulva.

"Yes," Akira whispered.

"Okay," he said, and pressed his lips to hers even as he pushed up into her, past whatever barrier remained after her athletic training.

"Annnnd Pactio!" Chamo cried out as the light surged up around the pair of them, not that they noticed, being fully engaged in the act. Nor did they see the card starting to emerge before the ermine. "Ah, how cute!" he said as he gazed at the picture of Akira in some sort of a mermaid costume. "I wonder what this one does and hey wait wait wait, why is there a silver border around this one?"

"Ah! Ah! Ah!"

"Akira! Akira! A-KI-RAAA!"

Chamo's attention momentarily diverted from the card to the coupling lovers beneath the tree, and he gaped as he realized that the light of the pactio contract had not yet died down. That ... was unusual, even considering how he'd had to draw the circle all the way around the tree trunk in order to incorporate both of them. But nothing like this had happened when the other big circle he'd drawn, the one around the hotel that one time, had been completed. Chamo found himself becoming somewhat alarmed.

"Aniki," he called out. "I think I may have made a slight miscalcul-"

And then the light became all-encompassing.

Negi's eyes were shut. He couldn't see that light. He couldn't see anything. He couldn't hear anything. There was only the roaring in his head, growing louder and louder.

 _What do you want from me?_  he asked it, as he had before.  _I will give you anything if that's what it will take. I will give you **everything**  if that's what it will take! Is that it? Take it! Take all that I have, all that I am, just please, please, please, help me to save her/them/all/everything/please!_

The roaring stopped.

In the silence that ensued, for a fraction of a second, Negi heard a voice answering his own.

**Thank you.**

Then climax took him and his self-awareness ceased as surely as it had when Ku Fei struck him.

* * *

High above them, the World Tree soared. Until this very moment, it had also drooped. Branches that had formerly been firm enough for small children to walk along, if they were careful, had begun to sag, just as some lower branches had sagged enough that they broke loose from the trunk and fell to the ground. Leaves had dulled, past brown to almost gray. Death had been drawing closer and closer.

No more.

The light surged up from the roots of the World Tree, suffusing each branch. Leaves gone grey turned brown, turned green ... turned a brighter green than ever before. Branches straightened, extended. New leaves budded, opened, spread. And pollen exploded from each flowering bud, filling the early morning air, with new doses streaming forth every moment, like ... well ... like a boy spewing forth semen.

But sweeter smelling.

* * *

Slowly and sneakily, Misora crept into the front doors of the cathedral. She wasn't exactly praying that no one would notice that she was coming in so far past curfew as to completely redefine the definition of the word 'late', since, despite everything, she still held a few things sacred. But she really really hoped that no one would catch her.

"Misora."

 _Aw crap,_  she thought as she froze in place just a bit past the doorway. Maybe she should have prayed after all.

Sister Shakti, who had been standing right beside the doorway, hidden by the frame, walked up to the frozen girl and glared down at her. "Where were you?"

"... would you believe -" Misora started to ask.

" _No._ "

"Well, then I'm not sure why you bothered to ask," the student nun said, avoiding her mentor's expression.

"Misora, this is not the 'you have pulled an amusing if rule-breaking prank and will now suffer the consequences thereof' angry face," Shakti said angrily. "This is the 'a student in my care was out all night and now I want to know why' angry face. Do not distort, do not ask rhetorical questions, do not make me any angrier than I already am! You, you -" To Misora's mild astonishment, the nun actually seemed to be stuttering in incoherent fury. "- I wasn't worried about you when you were on the magical world, because I knew that Cocone-chan would look after you and I knew you were in God's hands, not mine, but right now, you are in my hands, and I want answers!"

With the anger of the actually guilty, Misora studied the floor. "'In your hands,' huh?" she asked, a bit snidely. "What are you going to do if you don't like what I have to say, spank me?"  _What's that weird smell?_

"Quite possibly!" Sister Shakti snapped. "Lord knows your butt is cute enough that it could stand to be a bit reddened!"

They stared at each other.

A few moments later, as Cocone came up to check on Sister Shakti, who'd been keeping a vigil all night while she - who was just as worried about Misora - was able to get fitful sleep, she was somewhat startled to find her partner and their mutual superior sprawled in a sexually-charged sixty-nine position in front of the door, Misora's reddened butt in plain sight, shrieking obscenities as their fingers and tongues worked each other over. Their cries stilled momentarily when they realized that someone was staring at them.

"C-cocone-chan, th-this isn't -" Shakti started to say.

Cocone nodded. "Okay. I'm going to go back downstairs and lock myself in my room," she declared quietly. And then she promptly turned and did so.

* * *

"What's going to happen to me?" Shiori asked, almost too quietly to be really considered speech.

"I don't know," Fate replied. "Most likely, if this truly is the end, you'll just ... cease."

The two of them were seated at the far end of the laboratory from Sakurako, who was trying to give them some space while she bit her lip almost enough to draw blood. She couldn't quite make out what Shiori was saying, but it was fairly easy to guess from Fate's replies.

"Will it hurt?"

"No," Fate answered definitely. "There will be no pain. I am certain of that."

"Gaahhhhh!" Sakurako finally semi-shrieked, drawing both of her companions' attentions. "No, this is nuts, there has GOT to be something we can do!"

"No," Fate said after a moment. "There actually does not have to be anything. Sometimes, even if you give it all you have, your efforts will come to naught. It is the unfortunate truth that heroes like Negi-kun will never understand. And sometimes, they even convince those of us who know better to believe in them. I truly thought he would be able to overcome this challenge." Fate actually sighed. "I imagine that will make for a nice epitaph."

"But - wait, epitaph?" Sakurako asked, eyes wide. "Are you -"

"No. Not directly. But as I've told you, I was created to save the magical world from destruction, and while I can stand the failure of individual attempts to do so, witnessing its actual destruction will likely trigger suicidal programming within me."

"Jeez, Fate!" Sakurako cried.

"We could stand his help, yes."

Then the door to the laboratory swung open. "Okay, I'm here, what's the matter?" declared Haruna as she stepped in.

"Haruna-san?" chorused Sakurako and Shiori (the latter very quietly.)

"Saotome?" said Fate, a half-beat later.

"Sheesh, what's with you?" Haruna asked, frowning. "Didn't you call me over here?"

"No, I called Bookstore and asked her to get hold of Konoka-san so she could help Shiori, and maybe Fate, now, too," Sakurako explained, frowning.

"... well, that doesn't make sense, why would Nodoka then tell me to -" Haruna started to wonder out loud, then paused, her ahoge abruptly twitching. "Let's set that aside, for the moment, and examine other questions, like, why am I detecting so much love reek in this room, and since when are you using yobisute on these two?"

Shiori's nostrils twitched.

"I see no point in hiding the truth," Fate said blandly. "I have engaged in sexual misconduct with Sakurako, and have already resigned my position as teacher over it."

Haruna stared.

Shiori's eyes blinked.

"Sha-na-na, sha-na-na, hey-hey-hey, goooodbye!" Haruna abruptly sang, then burst out into manic laughter. "Oh, man, Asuna vanishing or no Asuna vanishing, this is the best day of my life!"

"Haruna!" Sakurako cried, getting very angry and standing up.

"And you? Oh wow! Y'know, I always had the feeling you were going to fall for someone really weird, but this takes the cake! Well done, Sakusaku! Well done!" the mangaka said, clapping her hands loudly. She paused. "How come the love reek's getting stronger?"

"That. Is. IT!" Sakurako shouted. "You're damned right I fell for someone weird, but since that was you, DUMBASS, you really shouldn't talk!"

"... what?" Haruna peeped, eyes gone tiny.

"And, and, and - ARRRRG!" Sakurako shrieked incoherently, as she ran over to grab Haruna and slam their faces together, lips first.

"... what an odd development," Fate commented.

"I feel really really good," Shiori declared, and grabbed him.

* * *

In their bedroom, Nodoka was busily being the passive partner in tribadism while Yue actively scissored against her, almost all thoughts of how she'd talked her friend/lover into sending Haruna to deal with Sakurako's issues utterly vanished from her head.

Almost.

* * *

In Ayaka's room, it was unclear who was feeling more annoyed - Chizuru, who was, somewhat implausibly, still tied up and gagged, or Natsumi, who had to suffer the (subjectively)  _much_  greater indignity of watching her boyfriend sexually entangled with Mei Sakura and Megumi Natsume. The two juniors, along with their magister - presently having very loud hate-sex with Ayaka in the next room - had shown up to have a few choice words with 3-A's class representative about the flying restaurant operated by a member of her class, and had coincidentally arrived just as everyone's libido went crazy. Natsumi supposed that she could have joined in on the girls' furtive experiments with Kotaro's aged up form, but then she'd have to be in contact with them, which would be just awkward. Particularly since the two of them  _weren't_  awkward with each other, occasionally exchanging sloppy kisses as they went down on Kotaro.

 _Kids these days,_  thought the disgusted girl who'd been a virgin up until a week ago.

"Could you please untie me, now?" asked Chizuru, very approximately.

"When I feel like it!"

* * *

Elsewhere, Anya was in a state of terrified panic, totally and utterly unmixed with any bizarre arousal. (Noooope!) No sooner had she and Setsuna-san gotten Konoka-san back to her room, and settled down enough to start telling uplifting stories about Asuna - with Anya finally admitting to having developed a vague, grudging respect for the girl during the month they'd spent imprisoned together - than, before she could say anything, Setsuna and Konoka had been all over each other like ... like ...

... well, okay, she was a little deficient in the analogy department! So what!

Anyway, the two of them had been so focused on each other that Anya had been able to quickly make her escape from their room. But that had only been the beginning of the terrifying and totally not-at-all-arousing (Noooooope!) situation that confronted her. For, from the other rooms on the floor, she could hear moans and groans and sighs of ecstasy just like the ones coming from Konoka and Asuna's (former) room! Clearly, whatever spirit of perversion had infected Konoka and Setsuna had spread to others, like ... like ...

... something ... that ... spreads. Analogies were not Anya's skill! So what!

But there had to be a way to escape! Surely, she told herself, surely she would be safe in the company of her flat-chested fellows, even though she herself was no longer exactly flat-chested thanks to the age-up pills! Yet since she was utterly unaffected by the strange malady, finding it frightening rather than sexually appealing in any way, shape or form, which it was not (Nooooooooooope!) the same resistance should apply to those who were as poorly developed as she would be under normal circumstances!

That made sense, right? Right?

So she ran to Nodoka and Yue's room, flung open the door and cried out for their aid.

That was five seconds ago.

"Oh, holy fucking fuck!" Anya screeched as Nodoka's fingers reached up into her vulva, tearing back her hymen and interrupting the pleasure of having Yue noshing on her tits for a few moments, before further ecstasies descended on her brain.  _Oh well,_  she thought.  _At least I didn't give it up to Chamo like I always sort of expected ..._

* * *

After they'd made their discreet exit from the gathering at the base of the world tree, Chao and Satomi had wandered somewhat aimlessly for a while, before their steps took them to the Chao Bao Zi, where Satsuki was busily getting ready for the breakfast crowd. She had been very pleased to see Chao again, and had suggested that Ku would likewise be pleased. Agreeing, they'd given her a call and given her the good news. Fei, for her part, was utterly thrilled to hear that Linsheng had returned, and promised to join them very shortly.

Before departing, of course, Ku Fei had proceeded to call the martial artists she'd occasionally sparred with, the captains of the various clubs, and told them to assemble around the Chao Bao Zi to be given a demonstration of true martial arts mastery. She took it somewhat for granted that this was to be the sparring match she'd been promised by Chao as the future girl departed, rather than anything silly and pointless like a convivial discussion between friends. Perhaps Negi was still beyond her mastery, but by a simple sorting algorithm, Negi had beaten Chao, so Ku might just possibly be able to do the same!

"Chao!" she cried as she arrived, a few moments after the martial artists had assembled there. "I chall-"

And then the World Tree had lit up, and a very strange odor had filled everyone's nostrils.

At the moment, the door to the Chao Bao Zi and its windows were closed and firmly barricaded while Chao, Satsuki and Satomi twisted into a miniature daisy chain. (In the handful of the moments of conscious thought that she experienced while this was going on, Satsuki found herself slightly torn between her vague memories of telling Negi that she wanted a single partner and the thrill she was experiencing.)

Outside -

"MORRRRE!" Fei shrieked as she yanked her mouth away from Gotokuji's cock, which had been down her throat a second ago, glaring back at Yamashita and Nakamura, who were respectively up her cunt and ass. "MORE DICK IN ME!"

"But Ku-taicho!" Gotokuji protested. "We -aaaaah!" He broke off as she slid her lips up the length of his shaft and teased it slightly with her oh-so-deadly teeth. "We are filling all your holes!"

"FILL WITH MORE!"

They could but obey her demands, as Daigoin proceeded to slide himself up into Fei's vulva alongside Yamashita ...

* * *

"This ... this cannot be happening," Nitta gasped through a dry throat as he gazed in stunned horror at the teacher's lounge, and more specifically at the goings-on in the teacher's lounge. Every teacher had been contacted by the Headmaster early in the morning and told to assemble in the lounge in preparation for bad news. Nitta had obediently shown up promptly on time, just as the strange scent had begun to make its way into the building.

And now? Now, in the center of the room, Shizuna lay on her back atop one of the desks, her skirt and shirt both pulled up and bra and panties pulled aside while Takahata, fully dressed except for his unzipped pants and face set in an expression of grim determination, pounded away between her legs, and Gandolfini, face torn between horror and arousal, shoved his own member into Shizuna's mouth as her neck dangled over the desk's edge. Meanwhile, Ninomiya was shrieking as she rode a startled but not terribly upset Seruhiko in one of the lounge's chairs.

"It  _is_  happening," Nijuuin confirmed as he stumbled towards Nitta. "Can you not feel it yourself? The nearly irresistible urge to throw oneself at another, regardless of emotional connection, and begin mating?"

"I ... can feel it," Nitta answered through gritted teeth. "But ... it ...  _can_  be resisted!"

"I am in awe of your willpower, Nitta!" Nijuuin cried out. "My own is not nearly so mighty. It is with immense difficulty that I have not seized upon the opportunity presented by Ninomiya's obviously available rear entryway! Only the thought of my daughter has kept me from doing so ... and as I say that, my thoughts of  _her_  begin to turn salacious!" he concluded with a shriek.

"No!" Nitta replied, appalled. "Fight it, Nijuuin! You know that to be an abominable act far worse than anything we have already witnessed!"

"I do, I do, and yet - and yet!" Nijuuin agreed, tears flowing from his eyes. "All I can do is hope that I encounter some willing person between here and the kindergarten! Farewell, Nitta-sensei. I will most likely kill myself if I am unfortunately unable to encounter some willing person ...  _afterwards_ ," he added gloomily.

"Wait!" Nitta shouted, interposing himself between Nijuuin and the door. "Have you truly considered all options?"

"I - are you suggesting -"

"Wouldn't it be better than molesting your child?"

Nijuuin sucked in a breath, then nodded. "For the sake of my daughter," he said, and then pulled Nitta close to him.  _Things I gotta go through to get laid these days,_  the closeted gay teacher thought wearily.

* * *

"I think maybe we should stop having sex," said Yuna.

Her father, having just kissed the inside of her thigh and begun moving in to perform cunnilingus on her, paused and looked up at her in shock. "I'm sorry, what?"

"I think maybe we should stop having sex," she repeated. "Geez, Dad, are your ears going, too? I've been thinking you need a stronger prescription for a while now, y'know."

"No, no, my ears are - oh," he said, breaking off abruptly, and nodding a sudden weary understanding. "You mean, stop it for now, because you want to get some sleep."

"Um ... well, yeah, that too, but I was actually talking about stopping permanently."

Wataru gaped up at her. "I ... I don't ... really?" he concluded, after reaching the conclusion that saying 'I don't believe it' would not go over all that well.

"Well, yeah. You know how I was saying that if we hooked up with Negi-sensei, that would help keep everything a secret? Well, even though that's working just as well as all of my ideas do - could you not cough there, Dad? I don't want my coochie to catch your germs."

"Sorry, sorry," he said a bit hoarsely.

She continued after a suspicious stare at him. "Even though ... I kinda found myself feeling a little bit jealous while I was watching you schtupping Makie, and Misa, and a few of the other girls at that goodbye party. And I don't like feeling jealous -"

"You followed me half-way across Mahora when you thought I might be dating Donet-san," her father was moved to observe.

 _That_  got her to slam the side of his head with her knee. "Because I was unhappy about how jealous I was feeling, obviously!" she said heatedly. "And just like then ... the answer to the problem of my jealousy is the same. Dad, we should stop having sex, and you can go have sex with whoever you want and I'll do the same." Yuna nodded firmly.

"Well ... all right then," Wataru said once the ringing in his head stopped. "I ... I see your point. And ... I guess that I'm proud of you, actually, for showing this kind of aaaaaaaaahhhh my little girl is growing upppppp!" he abruptly started sobbing.

"Oh, geez, Dad, that's  _creepy_  under the circumstances!" she said, pulling away.

The doorbell rang.

"Okay," she said, getting out of bed and marching over to pick up a dressing gown. "I'm gonna go answer that while you pull yourself together. Do it quick."

"Mm-hm, mm-hm," said the sobbing naked man.

 _Sheesh,_  Yuna thought as she walked out of the bedroom towards the front door, past the firmly sealed windows.  _I hope it's not one of his colleagues, this could be hard to -_

She'd opened the door only a crack when it was slammed the rest of the way open and a frantic-eyed Donet McGuinness shoved herself in. "Yuna!" she cried. "Thank God! I wasn't sure what I was going to do if you weren't here!"

"Dwah?" Yuna asked in the fraction of a moment before she was firmly and deeply kissed.

"You taste just like your mother," Donet told her huskily as she started to pull open the girl's dressing gown.

"Dwah?" Yuna asked again, now that her lips were free and Donet was licking and biting on her nipples in a way that suggested great familiarity with the methods of doing so.

"So lovely, just like her," Donet moaned.

Holding a towel around his waist, Yuna's father stumbled out into the hallway. "Yuna, what in the world -" he started to ask, then fell silent as he gaped at the woman proceeding to make out with his daughter right before him.

"Gasp!" gasped Donet, as she looked up from Yuna's supine form. "Yuna, can it be that you have seduced your own father into decadent habits?"

"Ah, ah, well -" the teacher started stammer out.

"That's so hot!" the magical warrior said admiringly, in much the same tone of voice worthless heiresses might use. With a quick yank, she pulled her skirt up to reveal that she wore no panties beneath. "Fuck me, fuck me tooooo!"

Wataru met Yuna's bewildered eyes ... and shrugged. "Well, we have to buy her silence," he said with a shrug, as he dropped the towel.

"Ahhhh!" Donet cried out as her back arched a moment later. "So goood! So much bigger than the Magus!" With that exposition out of the way, she dived down between Yuna's legs.

"Dwah?" Yuna asked for a third time.

* * *

"Nawaki!" Eiko, leader of the Black Lillies, cried out in ecstasy, as her boyfriend pounded into her on that very dodgeball court where, months before, her team had known the humiliation of defeat for the first time. It had seemed as good a place as any for her first time in another area.

"Eiko-samaaa!" he answered her cries with one of his own as he released his load within her.

"Oh, Nawaki," she groaned. "I love you so. You are so wonderful, so vigorous, so manly. You're ready to go again, right?"

"Uh, well, I will be ready when you are -" he said a bit hesitantly.

"Oh, not with me, silly," she reassured him. "I'm a selfish, spiteful person, but I'm not selfish or spiteful enough to refuse to share something as wonderful as your manhood with my teammates. Do I seem like that sort of a person?" she asked, tilting her head a bit.

"Of course not, Eiko-sama," Bibii said quickly as she sat naked before her.

"Not at all, Eiko-sama," Shii concurred as she likewise crouched naked beside Bibii.

"No, no, indeed, Eiko-sama," chorused the rest of the naked Black Lillies who had never been fortunate to be named in the text.

"... I'm going to die, aren't I?" Nawaki said quietly.

His doom, if doom it was, drew nigh.

* * *

Saotome Haruna had been very comfortable in her bisexuality for some time - comfortable enough to have casual conversations referring to it with a certain aged-up boy teacher, at least. And she had been likewise comfortable in her self-definition as someone who was sublimely indifferent to the sex of a potential romantic partner, as long as that hypothetical partner was interesting, cute and fun. Especially fun.

Then she'd actually gotten fucked and come to the rather startling conclusion that she liked cock better than she'd realized. Even as she'd rampaged through her suddenly available classmates, she'd always been looking for opportunities to get a man's phallus - any man's phallus - up in to her vulva. Why, just the other day she'd schtupped a somewhat annoying wolf-boy whom she would actually have preferred to pair with Negi under normal circumstances, and been unfazed by said wolf-boy's girlfriend refusing to put out for her. Clearly, she tended more towards the heterosexual spectrum of the rainbow.

And yet, here she was, getting fucked by Sakurako and having her mind blown by how good the girl was at it, and how easily her fragile self-definition could shift!

"Wha-wha-wha," she gasped out as Sakurako violently scissored against her.

"Wha-what?" Sakurako snapped.

"No," Haruna gasped. "Not wha-what. Wha- _why_! Why didn't you ever say any-"

"Because I am a shy and retiring maiden!" Sakurako nearly shrieked, grinding against the girl on the floor on each word.

"Ghahggg!" Haruna riposted. "Nuh-no ... no! You're a cheerleader! And you just fisted me not five minutes ago!"

"Agggh! Shut up! Shut up shut up shut up!" Sakurako actually did shriek.

* * *

Elsewhere, Tsukuyomi, heavily bound and gagged as she sat in a cell beneath Mahora's church, felt a strange and mysterious sensation of annoyance over and above how she felt about being unable to do anything while she helplessly watched Touko and Katagiri violently coupling before her tender maiden eyes.

 _It's like someone stole my schtick,_  she thought.  _But how?_ How?

* * *

In the interim of that digression, Sakurako had rolled Haruna over so that the artist was crouched over her while her hands clenched Haruna's shapely buttocks. "You are a bad girl!" Sakurako cried, spanking firmly.

"Well, yeah, no argument," Haruna dazedly agreed.

"And do you know what bad girls get?" Sakurako demanded.

"... uh," Haruna said, suspecting the answer but not really sure.

"Bad girls get fucked up the ass!" said Sakurako, and pulled Haruna's cheeks to the side to expose said ass to any onlooker.

Any onlooker in this case, was Fate.

"Gahh!" Haruna gasped as she was vaginally penetrated and felt her self-definition starting to shift  _again_.

"Fate! I said her ass!" Sakurako shouted.

"She hasn't douched," Fate explained patiently.

"That's not the point! I'm making a literary reference, here!"

Shiori, once more fucked into semi-comatose status, giggled faintly from the other side of the room.

* * *

"And then we'll have all the obnoxious guys from Kanto, and all the obnoxious guys from Kansai, come in here, and I'll take them all two at a time - maybe more if any of the girls on either side want to join in," Kouko enthusiastically proposed as she lay flat on her back on the bed in the Konoe's cabin, generously donated to them by the academy.

"Uh-huh," grunted Eishun as he pounded away between her legs, enjoying the distraction that the sex act made from the rather disturbing ideas that had been babbling out of his wife's mouth since the weird scent descended.

"I'll become the living embodiment of the peace treaty!" Kouko continued as she swiveled her hips to meet his lunges. "Everyone on either side will be linked by having been up me at some point! Nobody will be able to fight after that, they'll all be too embarrassed! It's the perfect solution!"

"What if they start fighting over the right to get another go at you?" Eishun asked wearily.

He was apparently not the only one who was distracted. "Perfect solution!" Kouko repeated, eyes sparkling in a way that reminded him very much of their daughter, uncomfortably at the moment. "And then we'll have the non-committed sides join in as well, and you can take care of Tsuruko-chan and Motoko-chan and Setsuna-kun and -"

"Setsuna-kun?" Eishun asked, pausing in his labors. "Am I going to have sex with her and Konoka in this affair, too?"

Until this very moment, he had not realized just how sharp his wife's fingernails were - not until they wrapped around his ears. "Of course not!" she shouted, clearly no longer lost in weird political and sexual delusions. It was sort of extraordinary how she could come back to reality so quickly. "There are  _limits_!"

He thought that was a little unfair, coming from her, but he also didn't want to lose his ears. "Got it," he peeped.

* * *

Mana walked aimlessly across Mahora, her half-demonic nature providing her some shielding from the sexual haze which had descended on the campus. Some shielding, in that she was able to resist the urge to throw herself into every coupling that she observed. Some shielding, in that she didn't really  _want_  resist that urge ... but she did, nonetheless. She'd casually shot knock-out darts into those few individuals who'd extended her invitations that had been just a bit too fervent for her liking, and walked on.

She'd crossed the whole campus, and seen things she had never imagined. Boys & girls, boys & boys, girls & girls, grown men and women and adolescents, all fucking as though their lives depended on it. Only the very young were immune. In some cases, their caretakers had had the presence of mind to shield their charges from the sights and sounds which were about to occur, before they joined the orgy. In some cases ... that presence of mind had not been present. There would likely be a number of rather traumatized children after this day was done.

Mana might have mourned, but she of all people knew that innocence was too fragile to endure in this world.

She walked aimlessly, or so she thought, but eventually she realized that her steps were leading her in the direction of the biathlon club's training range. And that they were growing quicker. She smiled faintly at her unconscious as she walked along. She wondered, in a vaguely amused way, if he'd managed to remain faithful.

"Eh?" Captain Serizawa shrieked as the door slid open and he saw Tatsumiya Mana glaring down at him like the wrath of an angry god. "Tatsumiya-san?! But then who are you?" he demanded of the tall, dark-skinned woman astride his naked form.

"Nin nin!" she replied in Mana's voice, as she made hand gestures before her breasts. "I was keeping him safe for you," the still tall yet very different woman who was revealed a moment later. "Aren't I nice?"

"You're incredibly nice," said Mana, and raised her gun. THWIP! went the dart.

Kaede's eyes actually opened completely when the dart struck Serizawa in the head and he fainted dead away, unable even to express his final thought before darkness took him. (It was, of course, "Again?!")

"Uh," she said in the suave tone of a highly trained ninja.

"Okay," said Mana, hair gone white, eyes gone gold, robes gone ... somewhere else. "You want to fuck me? Then we're going to fuck!"

"Eep de gozaru," said Kaede.

Outside, a certain pair of ninja cadets were too engrossed in their dealings with each other to pay much attention to the rather loud noises coming from within the building, which included frantic sounding attempts to open a door for whatever reason - doubtless to let in some light rather than anything silly like escaping. One of the ninja cadets did happen to notice a pair of odd looking animals coupling in the bushes not far from them, and cheerfully took this as evidence that nature itself was embracing the same urge as they.

(One of the pair of shapechanged princes from the magical world thought the same thing, incidentally.)

* * *

In his office, Konoe Konoemon was busily channeling the erotic energies coursing through even his elderly form into writing the letter of resignation he had a sneaky suspicion he was going to be asked to submit once word of what had happened to his campus got out. Hopefully, the names that were named and the locations and identities of the buried bodies discussed therein would get his job offered back to him shortly thereafter, but that didn't really matter. Happily, no one had come into his office yet to try and seduce him.

Which was sort of annoying, actually.

And then, quite abruptly, the door opened just a bit. A short drum sequence ensued as a stockinged female leg rubbed up and down its inside, and then Sayo, dressed in lingerie borrowed from Evangeline, danced into view as an electric guitar riff joined the drums. "Hello, Kokkun," she purred as an American singer began to chant about the joys of both the simple and the rock-star life.

"Ghgl," said Konoemon, and bounded over his desk.

"This is really, really wrong!" moaned Kazumi as she held up the CD player's speakers while watching a ninety year old man fuck her girlfriend. How was she supposed to masturbate while her hands were full?

* * *

And then she was back.

Asuna looked around at her surroundings, judging it to be a few hours after her departure. Nothing looked to be on fire, so things seemed to be going rather well, given the givens. And the World Tree, which had looked so droopy and fragile, was flourishing, glowing with vitality and probably magical energy. It seemed to her that the branches of the tree shifted slightly in a way that resembled a wave of greeting to her, so she answered it with a wave of her own.

"Okay," she said, still looking around. "A little later than I was expecting, so I guess everyone's gone home. Looks like I get to do the 'rumors of my demise' bit. I guess that's kind of -"

"Asuna-san!" called a faint voice from somewhere not too far away. Asuna found herself bracing to receive a hug delivered by dynamic entry. When it became obvious that nothing of that nature was forthcoming, and the cry was followed up with, "Help!", she started walking towards the World Tree, as the voice seemed to be coming from that direction.

She blinked as Chamo's crumpled, unconscious form came into view, and quickened her pace ... though it only took a moment for her to see who was calling for her. "Akira-san?" she asked, amazed. And then she stared.

"Thank goodness!" Akira said, expressing more emotion in that one moment than Asuna had ever seen from her. "Something's happened to Negi!"

"Uh ... yeah," Asuna agreed, still staring. "Something other than the obvious, because, y'know,  _that_  has been happening a lot. What ... what was it?"

"I don't know! We were ... and then ... he -" Akira looked to be on the verge of panic. "And he won't wake up!"

"Ah," Asuna said, nodding. "This, I can do something about." Deep breath. " _You dummy! Why are you crawling into my bed again!_ " she shouted at the top of her lungs.

Negi immediately woke up. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so-" he started repeating, then broke off in mid-apology. "Asuna?" he asked tremulously.

"Sure looks like me to me," Asuna replied, idly patting herself on the head and shoulders.

"But ... but when did you get so tall?" he asked. "And ... and why can't I see you clearly?"

"I didn't get tall," she told him. "As to the other -" She produced a pair of spectacles from nowhere in particular and set them on his nose. "Is that better?"

"Much!"

"Okay," she said. "So ... how did you do this?"

"Do what?" Negi asked, then looked down at his ten-year old form, and murmured a confused, "Oh".

"Indeed, 'oh' would seem to be the appropriate reaction," Asuna said, starting to unhook her skirt.

"Asuna-san!" Akira gasped. "Surely you don't intend to -"

"Huh?" Asuna asked, dropping the skirt to reveal that she'd picked up Setsuna's trick of wearing bicycle pants underneath.

"Oh," said Akira.

"See, even Akira thinks it's the appropriate reaction. But you should probably just call me 'Asuna', since we're pole sisters and all," she added to Akira.

"I thought you used the expression 'eskimo sisters'," Negi replied a bit dazedly as he stood up and shuffled off his trousers, danging around his left foot and now miles too big for him. So was the undershirt he was still wearing, but that was a lesser problem at the moment.

"And I thought you said that was a bad word and those people preferred to be called Aleunuit, or something like that," Asuna replied absent-mindedly as she slid the skirt up around his legs and cinched it around his waist, like a kilt.

"And I thought his relationship with Evangeline-san was very strange, but this takes the cake," Akira observed, dressing herself while listening.

Negi and Asuna each gave her a look - one apologetic, one vaguely amused. Then their attention returned to each other.

"So I guess this wasn't part of the plan?" Asuna asked.

"- part of the - Asuna, every single bit of my plan went out the window as soon as you didn't appear again within a few moments of your departure. I'm not sure what happened, but ..." The boy trailed off, turning to look at the flourishing World Tree. "I'm not sure," he said, in a much more hesitant tone, as if he was somehow unsure of his lack of surety.

"Maybe he can help explain," Akira said, having walked off to pick up Chamo's unconscious form and carry the ermine, gently, back to where Asuna and Negi were standing.

"You think?" Asuna asked, dubiously.

"Chamo-kun?" Negi asked, taking his friend's body from Akira, and petting him gently. "Please wake up, now, we need your help."

"We're just that desperate," Asuna added.

"Asuna."

"Aniki," Chamo said, starting to come around. "You would not be- _lieve_  the dream I just had. You'd grown up, see, and you were getting it on with all your girls and making a -" By now, of course, the ermine was completely conscious, and his fur stood up on end. "Uh ... hang on a second," he said, then reached behind himself to pull out a pactio card, depicting Akira in a bikini top and a mermaid's tail. A line of bright silver ran around the card's edge.

"... where was he holding that?" Akira asked.

"That's your takeaway?" Asuna asked in turn. "What's the deal with the silver lining, Chamo?"

"Uhhhh," he said. "It - uh - well ... it's a permanent pactio," he admitted, then looked up, from Akira's face to Negi's. "Mazel tov?"

"Mazu ... what?" Akira asked, bewilderedly.

"Yiddish for 'congratulations'," explained Asuna.

"... how do you know that?" Akira asked, bewilderedly.

"She just knows stuff," Negi said faintly, staring at his hand for no readily apparent reason. "Um ... could all of you please step back a bit? I need to check something."

Blinking, Asuna proceeded to guide Akira back a few steps, carrying Chamo with her as she did. The boy took in a deep breath, and murmured, "Ras tel Ma Scir Magister. Sagita Magica." With that, a tiny ball of light appeared over Negi's hand - a single magical arrow of no specified elemental type. He took in another deep breath, then let it all out in a single short phrase. "Stagnet. Complexio, Supplementum pro Armationem!"

Absolutely nothing happened. With a sigh, Negi banished the arrow. "I don't have Erebea, anymore," he announced.

"What?!" Asuna and Chamo chorused. Akira looked completely unmoved by this revelation, which meant that she was somewhat surprised as well.

"When I ... I offered the World Tree anything that I had, and it didn't only take the spell that I'd already loaded - the age-up spell of the pill - but also the whole structure behind it," he continued, sounding very, very tired. He looked up at the flourishing tree above them, and smiled faintly. "I guess that was the answer. I guess that was what it was going to take."

"Okay," said Chamo. "So ... now what?"

Negi shook his head. "I haven't the faintest idea, Chamo-kun. I imagine ... that's it's going to be interesting finding out, don't you?"

"Great attitude!" Asuna said, covering up the ermine's mouth before he could respond to that. "Oookay, let's let the happy couple have a moment or two of privacy -"

"Happy couple?" Negi and Akira chorused in mutual confusion.

"No, no, Negi-kun, I mean, even after what we did, I-I-I'm sure that he still loves Makie more -" Akira continued after the moment that the two of them spent staring at each other, post-chorus.

"No," Negi admitted quietly. "I still care about her, I still cherish her, but ... she is not the person whose face comes into my mind when I think of love," he added.

"Well, but, I mean, there's, there's no way -"

"Yes," he interjected again. "There seems to be a way, and - "

"Like I said, a moment of privacy," Asuna added. She was well aware that neither of them was likely to actually hear her, under the circumstances, but that wasn't the point.

"You're really okay with this?" Chamo asked as she carried him away.

"I don't like him that -" she began to repeat herself.

"Asuna," Chamo interrupted, for once not using gangster language. "Don't try and grift a grifter, okay?"

She coughed, uncomfortably. "Never mind that, now. That reaction, a while ago, that you had, wasn't just about Negi's permanent pactio. It was way too extreme for that. What  _else_  happened?"

With a glance towards Akira and Negi, who were still communicating in interrupted sentence fragments as they  _slowly_  walked towards each other at a pace which would have them embracing sometime around the turn of the year, Chamo coughed uncomfortably. "Well ... yeah." He shamefacedly pulled out a second card and held it out for Asuna to take.

Asuna stared at it in silence.

"Charta Ministralis, Negi Springfield?" she read aloud.

"So ... who is aniki's Magister?" the ermine asked, sounding almost panicked.

"That's a very good question," Asuna agreed, gazing up at the tree in bloom.

* * *

A few hours later ... after Asuna's bone-crunchingly huggy reunions with Konoka, Setsuna, Ayaka, Makie and, well, most of the class - Evangeline stood sneering in a way that might have fooled a small, not particularly clever child as to her pleasure at Asuna's return, and Chao just smiled enigmatically in a way that might have made a certain twin-tailed girl want to punch her very very hard - and also after everyone else on campus had calmed down and started to return to their original business, accompanied by a faint ukulele rendition of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' ... the Headmaster called an assembly - of every class, every school, every person in the Mahora district.

They gathered underneath the World Tree, serving as the largest open space in the area and also (unconsciously, in most cases) linked in the public mind with recent events. A platform had been hurriedly set up, with several of the senior members of the Faculty already standing there as Konoemon approached the microphone-equipped speaker's pulpit.

"Ahem," he began, his voice magnified many times over. "It has been an interesting day, hasn't it? Many ... unusual and uncharacteristic things have happened. I'm sure many of you are quite confused by recent events."

"Damn straight!" echoed more than one voice in response.

"And I'm sure many of you would like an explanation."

"YEAH!" again the voices echoed.

Konoemon began stroking his beard, maybe just a touch nervously. "But ... if you think about it ... would an explanation really make a difference? Understanding the past does not always lead to a greater degree of contentment with it. As someone once said, 'when ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise!' If one considers that, one might come to the not-unreasonable conclusion that  _forgetting all about it and never speaking of any of this ever again_  might just be a better course of action than giving or receiving an explanation."

"This is seriously what he's going with," Kouko, standing with the other teachers, said to Takamichi.

"Well, whatever works," Takamichi said.

"Now, some people, even clever and gentle and wise people, might not agree with this notion," Konoemon continued, otherwise showing no evidence of hearing anything that went on behind him. "And so the faculty will be available for private discussions about recent events. Simply make an appointment, and a member of the faculty will come to discuss these matters with you at their soonest convenience. I'm sure that once you've had this opportunity, any difficulties you might have with things that might have happened lately will soon be a faint memory. Or even no memory at all."

"And there's the stick," muttered Kouko.

"Well, whatever works."

"Ahem. Oh, one more thing. In light of recent events, any offers of resignation that my office might have recently received are going to be disregarded as one more example of events that we'd all be better off forgetting. Classes will resume tomorrow. That's all. Good day to you all."

"... my life sucks," said Fate, in the middle of the crowd.

No one paid him any attention, of course.

* * *

"So I'd say it all worked out well in the end," Negi commented, later that evening, in their room.

"Except for the part where you're mortal, now, and may or may not have the stamina to complete the terraforming project," Asuna said from the other side of the table, where Konoka, Setsuna and Ayaka were, once again, hugging her - as they had been since their reunions with her. Yes, even when. "And the part where Fate is still stuck teaching the class despite his best efforts to get out of it."

"No situation can possibly satisfy everybody," Negi said piously. "As to the other," he continued, just a bit more soberly, "I will still give it all that I have, and rely on my friends and allies to do the parts that they can do, rather than trying to do everything mysel- Asuna, stop laughing."

"I give it a week," she said, through chuckles.

"That's mean, Asuna," Konoka told her reprovingly.

"Thank you, Kono-" Negi started to say.

"He'll probably last two or even three weeks before he starts micromanaging everything again. Wouldn't you say so, Setchan?"

"I confess that I have a higher estimate of Negi's ability to learn his lessons than you, ojousama."

"Let me guess, you think I'll be back to my usual neurotic self in a month, right," Negi said dryly, chin pressed on the palm of his hand as he leaned on the table and gazed at the four young women.

"See?" said Setsuna.

"You're all wrong," Ayaka declared. "Negi will rely on me-I-mean-us, for I know that he knows that I-I-mean-we are ready and able to face down any challenges that come our way, whether they are villains, monsters, or swimmers who have oddly hydrodynamic hair! You can rely on me-I-mean-oh-who-am-I-kidding-I-mean-me, sensei! I'll be waiiiting for youuu! Here inside my heart -"

"Okay, Ayaka, I love you and all that, but if you start singing Celine Dion lyrics while you're hugging me, it is so over between us," Asuna told her.

"... well, things are back to normal, I guess," Negi said cheerfully, deciding to just forget about the disturbing lack of faith that the girls were showing in him. "And -"

Whatever else Negi might have been about to say was lost to history as there came a knock at the door.

"I'll get it," said Asuna, somewhat to Negi's surprise. She got up, carrying the other three with her, and walked to the door. "Hey ... oh, I was wondering when you were going to show up."

Slowly, Negi turned. Who could it be? Akira? Makie? Nodoka? Chisame?  _Shiori_?

 _Right on all counts,_  he thought, startled, as he saw all five of them entering the room in their pyjamas.

"Uh, good, good evening," he said, confused, as Asuna closed the door and firmly locked it. "What, what brings all of you here -"

Silently, Shiori held up a pill of age-changing pills.

"Oh," Negi said. "But ... I mean ... I hoped you'd understand that I, I have made a commitment, now, and -"

"Negi," Akira interjected. "Do you remember what I said about hearts healing and growing stronger?"

"Eh?"

"My heart has grown strong enough to take this," she told him.

"But ... but I ..."  _I'm not sure_  mine  _is!_

"We worked out a system," Nodoka explained, patiently. "I get tonight, and Yue gets tomorrow night, and Anya gets the night after that, and -"

"Anya?" Negi squawked.

"Where do you think we got the age-up pills?"

"I guess that was a silly question," Negi said.

"This is going to be so much fun!" Makie cried aloud, eyes sparkling. "I'm so happy that things worked out for you and Akira, Negi!"

"... yeah, great," he said. "Um, you girls do understand, I'm not ... quite ... as super as I used to be, right? So ... possibly I might not be able to do the 'he goes for hours' business, or -"

Shiori, still silent, held up another jar filled with a different kind of little blue pills.

"I see you thought of that," Negi said. "Oh well. It can't be helped." He stood up to start taking off his pants.

And then the pyjamas came off, but the time had come to leave Negi and his friends to his own devices, and so we move away from the sweet sounds of girlish laughter, sighs, and rhythmic beat of flesh on flesh.

* * *

**Epilogue**

"It's time, Asuna," she said, gazing down at the nude, somewhat indistinct form curled up in a ball on the beach before the surf.

The form muttered something in response, which could perhaps charitably be taken as a query concerning the time.

"Yes," she confirmed. "It's surprising that you've lasted so long." It really was.

"... 'm tired," the form said. "Go 'way 'n lemme sleep."

She considered this request, considered the many ways that she might answer it. There were all sorts of resources available to her, all sorts of way to rouse the sleepy form before her.

She kicked the other girl, sending her flying. Rather than getting up and starting shouting, however, the other girl just lay where she landed, unmoving.

 _Now_  she was becoming concerned. "Asuna. You need to wake up now. If you do not wake up now, you will never wake up at all."

"... uh-huh," said the other girl, growing hazier and less focused with each passing second.

Concern was quickly turning into terror. "Don't you remember your promise? The reason you endured all this for so long?" she asked, coaxingly.

"Yes," the other girl said, quite clearly. "I remember -"

"Then -"

"- it was kept."

For a moment, she was at a loss for words. "That, that wasn't you, Asuna. It was you, I mean, but it wasn't  _you_ , and you -"

"I'm done," the other girl said, voice growing very quiet, even quieter than her own. "I lived, I loved, and now I'm done. It's your turn now, Asuna. Goodbye."

Quite suddenly, Asuna Vesperina Theotanasia Entheofushia was alone on the beach.

"No," she whispered. "No, I can't, I'm not, I don't know how ..."

And then she woke up.

She was in the place from which that other girl had disappeared, more than a century before, staring down at hands much too large for her self-image, a costume she'd never worn, and feeling a panic unlike anything she'd ever imagined feeling welling up from a heart that had, she thought, turned to ice long before.

"I'm afraid," she confessed. "I don't ... I can't do this alone."

"But you're not alone," said another voice.

She turned, and saw that there was a girl standing not too far away, dressed in a costume not that different from her own, with long hair and an unfamiliar face that grew more familiar with each moment spent looking at it. Pieces of faces from borrowed memories could be seen there. Konoka, Chisame, Sakurako, Misa, Madoka, many others. And one more face, in particular.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"My name is Sanjou Kozue," the girl said, smiling warmly. "And I've been waiting for you, Asuna." She extended a hand towards Asuna. "So have a lot of people."

Slowly, Asuna stood up, and took the offered hand. "I'm not -" she started to say.

"I know. Come on. We've got a lot of catching up to do." Slowly, patiently, Kozue began to guide Asuna towards the light which could be seen at the bottom of the hill.

"Are you ... related to Negi?" she asked.

"Yes," Kozue admitted. "Please don't ask how. It's sort of a complicated bloodline, a long story for another day."

**The End ...  
For Now ...**


End file.
